Quilt celebrates St. Charles

You can have the original St. Patrick Catholic Church, the Hotel Baker, the Arcada Theater, the original Blue Goose Supermarket and many other St. Charles landmarks right on your lap.

It's possible simply because some numbers and skills added up for Joanne VanBogaert.

The lifelong St. Charles-area resident is 75 years old, and the St. Charles Heritage Center's history museum is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

VanBogaert says she has been "sewing forever" and has been quilting with the Prairie Star Quilters Guild since 1980.

She also volunteers to work at the history museum a few times a month.

That whole equation resulted in VanBogaert creating a colorful lap-size, 50-by-60-inch quilt displaying 54 images of historic St. Charles as a fundraising item and symbol for the history museum's celebration.

The quilt, on display at the museum, will be raffled off on May 18. Tickets, $2 apiece or three for $5, can be bought through May 17 at the museum, 215 E. Main St.

"I'm really interested in St. Charles," said VanBogaert, whose family farmed property along Route 38 near Garfield Farm Museum in what is now the Moraines of Çampton subdivision, where she lives with her family. "With me being 75, I understand the 75th anniversary celebration."

VanBogaert spent the better part of two weeks putting together the quilt, which she claims was an easier project than she had originally thought.

Julie Bunke, registrar at the historical society, said the idea for a memory quilt came up two years ago when she mentioned she had seen one a friend owned.

"Joanne said that St. Patrick Church had one, so we went over to see it and started brainstorming about historical images on a quilt," Bunke said.

Bunke said all of the photographs at the heritage museum have been scanned onto a computer, but there were thousands to choose from for the quilt project.

"That was the hardest part, making sure we covered all geographic areas of town, as well as all aspects of the community," Bunke said.

After Bunke used the museum copy machine to convert color photos onto a special fabric made to hold images, VanBogaert began the process of quilting the 5-by-7-inch images.

"I had been shown in the past how to do this, and it was much easier than I expected," VanBogaert said.

"But I did have a friend, Cindy Krelle of Batavia, help me because she had a big quilting machine.

"I machine quilt everything, I don't do it all by hand," she added.

VanBogaert was happy to take on a project that benefits the museum.

"I was really pleased with how the quilt came out," VanBogaert said before offering some of her own historical perspective.

"This was very easy, and I was surprised by that," she said. "Ten or more years ago, there would have been much more to it, like soaking the images in water to get them to take hold on the fabric."

Bunke said that museum visitors have been commenting about the quilt since it went on display.

"A lot of people remember the places and some of the faces in the photos," Bunke said.