Stitching North Carolina
The 100 County Quilt Project
The 100 County NC Quilt Project has been in the works for sixteen years. Here is a bit of it's history. During World War II, more young men from North Carolina were rejected from serving in the military because of health reasons than any other state. Not surprisingly, the state’s number of doctors and hospitals ranked near the bottom. North Carolina needed a state hospital! Centralized Chapel Hill, where a two-year medical school, opened in 1879, was expanding to a four-year program, was seen as the logical setting for the state hospital which would serve all of its people regardless of ability to pay. North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened for business on September 2, 1952, and has grown into five hospitals in the years since.
Before celebrating the opening of the N.C. Women’s and N.C. Children’s Hospitals in September 8, 2001, Joy Javits was tapped to lead a project that would represent all 100 counties served by the Hospitals. The response was enthusiastic and along with drawings of their county flag by children, and writings by women, a brilliant quilt made by many hands was the centerpiece at the celebration. Large as the quilt was, 27 counties were not represented at that time, but “holder” blocks were sewn in to provide a place for them. The quilt, as well as the poems and county flags, toured 18 counties over seven years.
In 2015, Javits, along with writer, Valarie Schwartz, began to contact quilters and artists in the missing counties. As of June 2017, we have received all but 13 county blocks.
The Tarheel Quilters' Guild helped piece together the missing blocks of our state quilt by making and donating blocks for Scotland and Robeson Counties. Thank you Cindy Clifton for the Scottie Dog to represent Scotland County and Donna Hunt for making the Robeson County block.