QUILTING IN THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, #1 (Cheri)

As soon as we arrived in North Carolina a year ago, I started joining local quilting guilds.  One of them is extremely casual:  no shows, very minimal dues, and meetings at the Winston-Salem Dash baseball stadium.

This week we had a five-day retreat in Valle Crucis, a hamlet about 20 miles from the Tennessee border.

The retreat was held at the Valle Crucis Conference Center, which is on the land that is the heart of Valle Crucis, which means "Valley of the Crosses."  It has been owned by the Episcopal Church continuously for almost 120 years, though the connection dates back to the 1840's.

The lodge was a wonder of early-1900's simplicity, perhaps unintentionally mirroring the growing Mission furniture movement.

Valle Crucis Conference Center

Not everything was simple, though:

There was a series of illuminated paintings with script like this in an upper hall, with a note that said that they had been found in the basement.

In the 1930's, the Church used the area as a boarding school:

"The school attracted students from throughout the South and as far away as Connecticut and Missouri. The headmistress, Emily Toll Hopkins, was a Wellesley graduate, and the school advertised in Vogue.

People far beyond Appalachia sought Valle Crucis out, and Valle Crucis welcomed them. Ida O’Keeffe, painter and sister of Georgia, taught at the school in the 1930s. The interests and passions of the students and teachers helped expose the residents to a range of cultural ideas."

--  Our State magazine, 2010

Until 1967, much of the land not occupied by the historic buildings was covered with apple orchards.

We quilted in the Apple Barn, which - despite the name - originally housed dairy cattle.

I don't know how many of these bird houses there are, but I saw #28 on the other side of the Apple Barn, covered with just as much lichen.

To be continued . . .