the quilt show, the organizers discovered the “Topeka Rose” quilt design
and adopted it as their logo. In 1992,
known as the Indiana Quilt Registry
Genevieve Lehman, Doris Haggard,
Project. Representing 200 years of
Sue Christner, and Rosalie (Dintaman)
Indiana quilting history, the project
documented the history of some 6,400 Yoder of Topeka, along with Anne Retquilts. Among them was one quilted by ter of Wolcottville formed The Topeka
Christner’s mother, Goldie O’Neil Eash Rose Quilters.
By 2008, the show had outgrown
Christner, which was quilted around
both the Methodist’s facility and their
1930. That quilt, known as “Johnnie
Around the Corner” was chosen as one manpower abilities. They approached
the pastor of Eden Worship Center
of 84 quilts to hang in the Indiana
about taking over the show and movState Museum in Indianapolis. It was
ing it back to Honeyville. “I had no
also featured on the cover of the 1991
spring issue of Traces, a publication of idea what I was getting us into, my
wife and some of the ladies from our
the Indiana Historical Society.
church weren’t very happy with me,”
Goldie O’Neil was an Irish girl
born near Goshen, Indiana, in 1896. At confessed Eden’s founding pastor Harthe age of four she was placed in an or- old Gingerich. “My late grandmother
phanage with her brothers and sisters. in Oregon always won blue ribbons
Three years later she came to live in La- at the state fair for her quilts and she
would be very excited about us having
Grange County when she was adopted
a quilt show. I just thought ‘What’s
by an Amish family from the western
part of the county. Quite naturally she the big deal; you hang them up and
was taught the art of quilting. In 1915, people come to look at them!’” Well, it
this Irish/Amish woman married Levi was a big deal and a lot of work. With
the help of Martha Snyder and Doris
D. Christner and set up housekeeping
Haggard from the Methodist Church,
near Honeyville. “My mother taught
the annual Topeka Quilt Show & Sale
me to quilt before I went to school,”
Sue once said, “It was just a part of our moved back home to Honeyville.
The move back to Honeyville
lives.”
has not hurt the show. In fact, it has
During one of the early years of
Quilted ... cont. from prev. page
continued to grow. Last year over 60
exhibitors displayed 1,129 quilted
items. Sales topped the $13,000 figure.
In addition to that, six vendors rented
booth space for the event.
Meanwhile the folks in Shipshewana were looking for ways to draw more
tourists and tourist dollars to the area.
Beth Thornburg of the LaGrange County Convention & Visitors Bureau says
that, “One of the top questions from
visitors and tour companies had to do
with quilting, so we decided to see how
we could build on that.” Monthly planning meetings began in the spring of
2008. In spite of the fact that quilters
and quilt shop owners were repeatedly
invited, over the four months only one
person showed up. But that person
was willing to do something, plus she
had experience with “shop hops”. They
decided to hire a judge and have a
juried quilt show where quilts would be
judged and a shop hop. Fifteen people
showed up at the next meeting, by that
fall there were 30. From that point on
the ideas and possibilities grew. According to Thornburg people said, “If
we’re going to have a party let’s make it
a big one.”
Since Topeka already had an
continued on page 17
The Hometown Treasure · June ‘12 · pg 15