"The Bedquilt" a performance by Michele LaRue

Winfield Public Library welcomes Michele LaRue for a performance of "The Bedquilt."

In this riveting program, two vibrant American stories return us to the days when quilts created community. We join a gaggle of townswomen – and meet a solitary spinster – who fashion remarkable art for everyday use.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s “The Bedquilt” reveals the suspenseful journey of an unlikely heroine: Aunt Mehetabel. Elderly and unmarried, she is taken for granted by her family…although she is “clever in the way of patching bedquilts.” Mehetabel grows as the story unfolds, winning admiration and finding self-respect. She painstakingly devotes herself to realizing her ideal: “a pattern beyond which no patchwork quilt could go.”

“The Bedquilt,” written in 1906, is introduced by the gleeful account of “A Quilting Bee in Our Village,” penned by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, eight years earlier. In Freeman’s little town, good food, gossip, and games make a successful bee – sewing is just the start.

Professional actress Michèle LaRue tours nationally with her repertoire of TALES WELL TOLD: stories from America’s Gilded Age. In The Bedquilt, she creates a dozen distinctive characters, concluding her program with Aunt Mehetabel’s surprising backstory.