Library Love in Quiltropolis

Christie Vilsack’s recent narrative about the Fenton, IA (pop. 250ish), library had an ending as satisfying as a well-paced novel. Community members and directors from Kossuth County’s thirteen libraries stepped up like heroes and heroines when rumor had it county supervisors might cut funding from rural libraries. If you love libraries as much as I do, you’ll enjoy her heartwarming story. Click to read it here or at the link above.

Toward the end of her piece, Vilsack invites readers to share stories of their relationships with librarians, library boards, library friends groups, and the people who oversee and fund our libraries.

Memories of my love of my own small town library came flooding back.

When I returned to Iowa in the early 1970s (from Texas, where I grew up), Winterset’s public library was on the corner of West court and Second Avenue. The stately Carnegie building later became City Hall.

In those days, I lived out in the country, in Lincoln Township. Once my three kids started to school, the library in town, just up the street from the elementary building, became the perfect after-school rendezvous spot. From the library, newly-checked out books in hand, we could walk to Montross Pharmacy, just around the block, where there was a soda fountain.

In the early 1980s, after I learned how to make quilts, my quilting buddy Liz Porter and I pitched a book idea to a publisher in Atlanta. The revival of quiltmaking brought about by the American Bicentennial was gathering steam. Virtually no how-to books on quilting existed, so the field was wide open.

Incredibly, we landed a contract. We lived on farms far from each other, and both had little kids, so the library became the place where we could meet to work on our manuscript, the kids in daycare a short distance across town.

The basement of the library was nice and quiet, the perfect place for two young writers who were also young mothers to concentrate.

Liz and I dedicated Classic Quilted Vests, our first publication, to our quilt club. The second one, Classic Basket Patterns, published in 1984, recognized the library.

The dedication beneath our names on the title page reads: This book is dedicated to the Winterset Public Library, and to all public libraries, for their wealth of resources and quiet corners. The clipping is from the Winterset Madisonian.

Winterset’s “new” library, which opened in 2001, was forged from the Winterset School System’s former vocational arts building. It takes up a quarter of a city block, and its resources are all at ground level, all handicapped accessible.

The water tower is actually behind the Winterset Public Library, NOT on the roof, though you’d think so.

These days, there’s a whole shelf of quilting books in the stacks, maybe even some by Fons & Porter.

Winterset's library has great places to sit, loads of educational material, friendly librarians, and a whole slew of quilting books.

Check out Christie Vilsack’s library story, please. There are more great characters, drama and tension in her piece than mine!

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