Historic quilt goes home

More than 80 years after it was first created, an historic quilt has finally returned home to Lyman County from the Black Hills, thanks to the efforts of two Custer women. However, the patchwork quilt bearing the names of 30 pioneer women from the Vivian area won’t be going on a bed or stored in a trunk, but has been put on permanent display in the Lyman County Historical Museum in Presho.

Carol Plaisted of Custer has been the caretaker of the needlework treasure since the mid ’80s when it was given to her by local blacksmith and family friend Tony Schatz. 

Having known Schatz since childhood, Plaisted became reacquainted with the man as an adult while working as a waitress alongside her mother at Judy’s Cafe.

“He would come in and we would wait on him,” recalled Plaisted. 

Inviting Plaisted and her mother to visit his home, Schatz took them into a crowded storage room and urged them to take home various items. 

“He was getting up in years and I think he just wanted us to have a family memento or something to remember him by,” said Plaisted. 

Uncomfortable at the thought of taking home Schatz’s family heirlooms, she tried to refuse, but Schatz was insistent, responding, “You’re like family.” 

“I picked up a little something and he said, ‛Nope! Nope! You’re going home with this,’ and he handed [the quilt] to me,” Plaisted remembers.

Schatz was not a man who took “no” for an answer and, not wanting to hurt his feelings, Plaisted finally accepted the quilt and took it home. 

Storing it away in a hope chest that had been in her family for years, Plaisted would take the quilt out and look at it from time to time over the years and was always careful to refold it differently each time to minimize damaging creases.

That’s where it sat for the next 35 years until she showed it to her quilter friend Jan Vandarwarka. 

After the passing of Plaisted’s husband, Bob, Vandarwarka offered to make a quilt for her out of Bob’s Harley-Davidson and drag racing shirts. When she came to present it, Plaisted showed her the old quilt. 

Recognizing its sentimental and historical value, Vandarwarka took an interest in the quilt and offered to use the internet to try to find the original owners. Within a day she got a message from 86-year-old Lonis Wendt of Vivian. 

Wendt revealed that the quilt had been made by a country women’s club in an area about 10 miles south of Vivian. Such clubs were common in the homesteading days of the 1930s when women would gather to sew and talk as a way to beat the boredom of life on the treeless prairies.

The names of 30 women are embroidered on the quilt squares, including Wendt’s mother, two grandmothers, four aunts and a cousin. 

In a letter to Plaisted, Wendt outlined the journey of the quilt, revealing that Schatz had worked as a blacksmith in Vivian and was well known and loved in that area, as well. 

“He had a reputation here of gigantic proportions which recognized his genius in building and repairing machinery and fabricating his own creations,” wrote Wendt.

Wendt said he believed Schatz had been given the quilt by “one of the grandmas” and related that the blacksmith had moved first to the Philip area in about 1945, then to Custer in 1957. 

The only clue to estimating the date of the quilt’s creation is that one of the ladies, Mrs. Dorritt Howder, added “1936” to her block. 

At a June 20 open house held at the museum, the quilt, now back home in Lyman County, was unveiled along with an explanation sheet telling the artifact’s journey and listing all the names it bears. 

While not a quilter herself, Plaisted said she can appreciate all the hard work that went into the heirloom and that she is glad it finally found its way home. 

“It was a perfect idea to go in the museum because how could you pick just one family to give it to?” said Plaisted.