Woman stitches a decade of memories

Staff Photo by Emily Toadvine

By JULIE CLAY

Staff Writer

It's really all about memories for Sue Woolums.

That's how she started quilting in the first place. When her two children outgrew their T-shirts, she couldn't bear to throw them away. So a few years ago, she made the T-shirts into quilts and gave them at Christmastime to her children.

Woolums, whose husband, Larry, plays in the Advocate Brass Band along with son Chris and daughter-in-law Kim, said the festival -- and music -- is very much a family affair.

She met her husband when they played trumpet together at Georgetown College. After they married, she didn't play as much but still loves the music.

"The whole family's musical," Woolums said. "It's something we've all come together and done."

The neatest thing about the festival is "just sitting back, knowing I have three people up there to be proud of," Woolums said.

She started quilting after she retired from Mercer County King Middle School, where she taught sixth-grade social studies. Woolums said she finds sewing and quilting "relaxing" as she watches TV.

"I have to have something at night to do," she said. She's made T-shirt quilts out of Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood T-shirts, other brass band T-shirts and Garrard County basketball shirts for a girl.

"The worst problem is having different size shirts -- you have to stretch them," she said.

She made herself a brass band T-shirt quilt and offered to make one as a festival fund-raiser a couple of years ago.

"The Advocate Brass has meant so much to our family, I just wanted to give back," Woolums said.

The 20 panels of the full-sized quilt feature all 10 T-shirts, beginning with a quilted insignia since the festival's first T-shirt did not feature a silk-screened back. Woolums put the quilt together in about two weeks, she said.

"They are so comfortable to lay under," she said. "They are so lightweight."

The quilt is sewn together by machine, then Woolums hand-quilted around the T-shirt designs. The panels are surrounded by a navy cotton fabric scattered with stars. It is backed by a bright red fabric.

She said her favorite was the Sousa T-shirt from 1992, since his marches are her favorite brass band music.

Woolums said her favorite years included the times the Canadian Brass band was here because "they are such a phenomenal group -- they give such a good show and good entertainment."