Mennonite Weekly Review

ELY, Minn. — It all started with fabric purchased in Congo. Or maybe it was the donated fabric from a farmer’s wife in Pennsylvania.

Participants join the beauty and variety of the pieces they worked on during the Wilderness Wind Creator’s Retreat. From left are Kathy Landis of Newton, Kan., Carol Miller Histand of Goshen, Ind.; Lerace Graber of Freeman, S.D., Marlys Wiens of Edina, Minn., and Shirley Ries of Freeman, S.D. — Photo provided by Wilderness Wind

On Oct. 1-4, Wilderness Wind camp in Ely hosted its first annual Creator’s Retreat.

Quilters, knitters, scrapbookers and others who do hand work were invited to come. No one suspected the event would link nine states or be influenced by Congo.

Lois and Art Kennel, with their family, worked in Kinshasa, Zaire, now Congo. While there, Lois Kennel bought many styles of Congolese fabric to bring back to the United States. From these fabrics, she sewed articles of clothing and tablecloths.

More recently, Kennel, of Rochester, offered the Congolese fabric pieces to Marlys Wiens, MCC relief sale quilt liaison for North America. Wiens brought her not-yet-done wall hanging to the Wilderness Wind Creator’s Retreat.

Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, Karen Alderfer, who machine quilts as often as she can, offered some of her fabric to her daughter, Heidi Feikert, in Kansas. Feikert, in turn, pieced a top that she donated to the Wilderness Wind Creator’s Retreat. This top, which will be auctioned at a future MCC relief sale, was one of the projects that people worked on during the weekend retreat in Ely.

“It was amusing how it came together,” said Kathy Landis, director of Wilderness Wind. “In August when all the registrants were from Minnesota, I couldn’t have guessed where others would come from.

“Volunteers working at Wilderness Wind in the course of the summer helped prepare for the retreat. Stan Kamp from Ohio made the quilt frame. Elsie Riesen from Nebraska stenciled the quilting lines and attached the batting and backing.”

For the retreat itself, participants came from Indiana, South Dakota and Minnesota.

“I particularly appreciated how we helped each other with projects,” Wiens said. “Once the quilting on the wall hanging was finished, two other retreatants offered to sew the binding.”