Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Mike Barnhardt
Enterprise Record

It was the early 1930s, and Wylene Keller remembers it like it was yesterday.
She was with her mother and grandmother, and they had put together a quilt with young Wylene’s help. She was about 9 years old at the time.
As she celebrates her 100th birthday this week, Wylene still has that quilt. And dozens of others that fill walls and closets in her Mocksville home.
Yes, she still lives at home. She eats well. She walks daily with “Charlie,” a walker she uses after a recent fall. She’s lively and healthy. She’s quick to tell you what’s on her mind.
And after a birthday party from fellow members of the Davie Quilt Guild, which was celebrating its 25th year, she is considering getting out that sewing machine once again.
Not that her family members would mind. Most, if not all, have one or more of her creations.
There’s the granddaughter who received a special “Carolina” quilt upon her graduation from the University of North Carolina. “She’s so proud of it,” Wylene said, “that if the house caught fire, that’s the first thing you get.”
“My family, anytime someone got married, they got a quilt. I gave them quilts for special occasions, but my closets are still full.”
Wylene and Marianna Smoot started the quilt guild.
“We both loved it, and had a lot of friends who quilted,” she said. “We got them all together and that’s how it started.”
Members of the club have donated thousands of quilts to charitable causes over the years, from Project Linus quilts to one Wylene went door to door at local businesses selling them a photograph to go on the quilt, with money going for a museum in Davie County.
While at her birthday celebration, she wanted to make sure that quilt was being taken care of; and was assured that it was in a vault at the Davie County Public Library, waiting to go on display again if a museum is ever realized.
Wylene attended guild meetings regularly until 2020. Meetings are at 1 p.m. on the third Monday of each month at the library. Each features a speaker or theme, and there are work days when members bring sewing machines and work together to make quilted items to donate to charities.
“We have lots of show and tell,” said Donna Hare, who along with Ann Cline, are the only charter club members still attending. “We learn from each other.”
“We like to see what other guilds do, too,” said member Diane Bromley. “We’re very productive for such a small group (21 members).”
Members inspire each other.
Even Wylene Keller, the founder and an inspiration to all, felt that quilting bug bite her again after an absence of a few years.