SEQUIM — The Questers Clallam C’lectors chapter in Sequim is creating a quilt for the Museum & Arts Center of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley that will capture and display the memory of long-forgotten pioneers buried at the historic Sequim Prairie Pioneer Memorial Cemetery.
The hidden cemetery at Pioneer Park on East Washington Street has gravesites dating back to the mid-1800s that carry the names of many of the families that first settled what became Sequim.
“It’ll be a record of many of those buried at the cemetery,” Clallam C’lectors President Grace Ann Kupfershmid said, “so you will not have to go out to the cemetery to see the record.”
Kupfershmid selected 25 names, asking participating Questers group members to research people laid to rest at the cemetery as part of the project.
Their findings have been recorded. The quilt will be presented to the MAC later this spring.
Kupfershmid said it will help others learn about those long forgotten at the cemetery.
Embroidered names
Participants embroidered on squares of period fabric the names of individual pioneers’ names that are on gravestones at the cemetery.
Clallam C’lectors member Nancy Pellegrino will sew the squares together into a quilt.
Priscilla Hudson — a Questers member, MAC board member and the first vice president of the Sequim Prairie Garden Club, which oversees the cemetery — assisted in the project.
The completed wall-hanging will be presented to Hudson upon completion and displayed on a wall at the MAC.
The Questers Sequim group, which now has 17 members, was formed in 2003.
“We have to have people that will open their homes to us,” said Kupfershmid, adding that many members have extensive antique collections and host monthly meetings.
The Questers, based in the nation’s birthplace, Philadelphia, was founded in 1944 by Jessie Elizabeth Bardens. Today, the Questers have more than 900 chapters with 15,000 members in the U.S. and Canada.
Besides the Sequim group, there is another chapter in Port Townsend, Eclectic Collectors 1257.
Members are history buffs who support preservation and restoration projects and who like to collect antiques, buttons, classic cars and “old things” in general, Kupfershmid said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.