Aurora’s Quilt Bee celebrates 30 years
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AURORA, Colo. — The whir of sewing machines, the snip of scissors, the chatter of good friends: that’s the characteristic buzz of Aurora’s Quilt Bee.
Each Wednesday for 30 years, women have gathered at the Aurora Center for Active Adults to chat, joke, commiserate and, above all, quilt.
Through fundraisers, the Quilt Bee supports Aurora’s broader senior community. And through a shared love of quilting, it fosters close, meaningful friendships between its participants.
“[You] find out that somebody that's a stranger quilts, and all of a sudden you've got a whole range of topics to talk about,” Quilt Bee program assistant Patty Hicks said.
“A lot of the people that may become isolated during retirement, or maybe they've been a stay-at-home mom and homemaker all their lives, now they have a place where they can get out, meet other people.”
Video: Peter Vo, Rocky Mountain PBS
Group quilting sessions are traditionally called “quilting bees,” which is where the Quilt Bee got its name. A passionate quilter named Jeanine Nehren and her friends founded the club in 1995 after asking the city for a place to sew and store their supplies.
The volunteer-based club, currently made up of 14 regular members, many of them older adults, creates and sells quilts to raise money for the ACAA, a city-run recreation center primarily serving adults 50 years and older.
The Quilt Bee uses almost entirely donated materials and brings in about $10,000 for the center each year, hosting two large sales in the winter and spring but still selling quilts year-round.
Darleen Schlemeyer, 84, joined the Quilt Bee 15 years ago. She rarely misses a Wednesday meeting.
“It's, for me, a really fun way to meet people,” Schlemeyer said.
Volunteering with the club gives former art student Schlemeyer a creative outlet and a connection to fond memories of learning to sew with her grandmother.
“Being able to do sewing that does benefit other people, other families or my own family is really a good feeling,” Schlemeyer said.
In 2023, more than one-third of adults aged 50 to 80 years old in the U.S. reported feeling isolated from others, a lack of companionship and infrequent contact with people outside of their home, according to a national survey by the University of Michigan.
Though reports of isolation and loneliness spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, about one-third of the senior population reported similar feelings prior to 2020 the survey found. The lockdowns only exacerbated a problem that already existed among the country’s older adults.
Patty Hicks has worked for the city for 44 years and joined the Quilt Bee in 2002 as a volunteer liaison. In her free time, she would sew with the group and contribute quilts for the fundraisers.
At the end of 2017, Hicks partially retired, stepping away from most of her job responsibilities as a recreation specialist. But she stuck with her role in the club.
Hicks, 73, has been an avid quilter since she was five years old. She’s built strong friendships with the members of the Quilt Bee, and now that she isn’t working full-time, she said she has more time to spend with the group.
“It's actually my outlet. It’s my retirement fun,” Hicks said.
“[Quilting] is not a craft. It is a lifelong learning, brain-booster type of activity. You're putting colors together, you're putting designs together, you're figuring out the math to make sure that it all works out. It keeps your mind young.”
The Quilt Bee is also doing its part to keep the art of quilting alive in Aurora.
Hicks learned how to sew from her mother, and in turn, taught her four children. Sewing is the base skill required to create a quilt, which has three distinct layers: a fabric backing, an insulated material called batting and a design layer made up of smaller fabric pieces.
As high school “home economics” classes dwindle and fast fashion makes at-home clothing repairs less vital, fewer people are learning the basics of sewing and passing those skills on to future generations.
“Quilting in some ways is getting to be a lost art, but it's rejuvenating. There's a lot of young people that are really getting into it again,” Hicks said.
The club’s newest member is also its youngest. Sofia Christensen, 23, joined a few months ago.
Christensen learned how to sew at five years old from her grandmother, and she started quilting five years ago as a stress-relieving activity during college.
Christensen takes a break from studying for her master’s degree at CU Anschutz and working at Michael’s to join the Wednesday meetings and sew with the group.
“It's a community who comes together because of a craft, but we’re all very friendly with each other,” Christensen said. “I think I'm a lot of their grandkids’ age. I joined because of the quilting, but now I feel like I have my own little group here, which is really nice.”
For the uninitiated who want to start quilting but don’t know how to sew, the center offers quilt classes, taught by longtime Quilt Bee member Diane Henderson. Henderson has been a member of the Quilt Bee for 23 years. She writes and colors all the quilting instructions she uses in class by hand.
Hicks recommends inexperienced sewers and quilters start in the class before jumping into the Quilt Bee.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.