By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Missouri Bicentennial Quilt will make its final stop in the city where it was first conceived, being displayed permanently in Hamilton.
Missouri Historical Society spokeswoman Beth Pike says the quilt started as an idea back in 2018, to find a way to bring all of Missouri's diverse population together.
"Teaming up with the Missouri Star Quilt Company and the Missouri State Quilters Guild, the state historical society of Missouri reached out with these groups and went to different counties, every county in the state and looked for and was able to receive a quilt block representing all 114 counties in Missouri," Pike tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
The Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton was responsible for stitching all the blocks together to form the quilt, which toured Missouri between 2021 and August of this year.
Pike says one thing she noticed as the Bicentennial Quilt toured the state, was people looking for their county to see how it is represented.
"And it's not always a story you might think it might be, for instance, people assume St. Louis would be the St. Louis Arch possibly," Pike explains. "But instead, what you see are words of braille that say the city of St. Louis, and that was because the braille itself was invented, the equipment to created braille the printing press was created in St. Louis."
Pike says she finds the quilt tells a story that many people may not know about all the counties across Missouri.
Pike says the quilt was a collaboration with the Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton and it seems only logical for it to come back home.
"Why not bring it back to Hamilton where many of these conversations took place, it was the Missouri Star Quilt Company which actually quilted all the pieces together," Pike says. "So, it felt like in many ways the quilt would be coming back home to Hamilton, Missouri where all of this began."
Pike says the historical society couldn't think of a better place for the quilt to be on permanent display. An opening ceremony at the Missouri Quilt Museum in Hamilton is scheduled for one o'clock tomorrow.
Along with the the Missouri and 4-H Bicentennial quilts, Bicentennial County quilts will also be on display, beginning with the Caldwell County quilt.
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