By Staff
COLLECTOR – Sandra Plummer collects pin cushions, thimbles, buttons and sewing machines in addition to the quilts all over her house. Photo by Carisa McCain/The Meridian Star
By Elizabeth Hall / special to The Star
Sept. 8, 2002
Sandra Plummer is a natural collector.
Thimbles, buttons, gourds and antique sewing machines fill her cozy, camp-house-style home. She also collects scraps of fabric and even has a closet overflowing with them.
The result? A multitude of beautiful, often whimsical works of art with names like "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," "Just Corny" and "Two By Two" (based on Noah's ark). Plummer makes quilts.
Plummer began quilting, she said, "mainly out of boredom." Seventeen and freshly married, she was searching for something to do. Quilting proved to be the perfect remedy.
The mother of five children, Plummer took breaks from her hobby to tend to her children's needs. But Plummer never stayed away for long.
Quilt stories
Every quilt tells a different story, preserves some small yet significant fragment of the past.
There is "Old Glory," which Plummer stitched when Naval Air Station Meridian was in danger of closing. Another quilt was in honor of the millennium.
There is one in honor of her mother, the late Mildred S. Keene, who also was an artist.
And then there is Plummer's pride a king-size, velvet quilt covered with autographs.
Plummer entered the quilt in a national contest sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine. Although it was among the state winners, she was later glad she didn't advance to the national level.
Crazy quilt
According to Plummer, the autographed quilt would be termed a "crazy quilt."
Plummer tends to keep her pattern terminology simple.
A major contributor to the recently-published Mississippi Quilts, she helped document more than 1,800 quilts in Mississippi all made before 1946.
A self-dubbed "contest fanatic," Plummer seeks out quilting contests regularly and eagerly.
DID YOU KNOW?
A member of numerous quilting organizations, Sandra Plummer is the current president of the Magnolia Quilters and former president of the Mississippi Quilting Association.
She is co-chairing an upcoming quilt show, "Patches of Love," scheduled Oct. 4-5 in Philadelphia. All proceeds go to Hope Village for Children.