PORT ANGELES — Two Port Angeles friends who began their friendship at Lincoln School together created a quilt to help raise funds for the restoration of the site of their alma mater.
Pat Donelan and Karen Grimsley, both 76 and of Port Angeles, met in the fourth grade at Lincoln School.
“We’ve been good friends ever since,” Donelan said.
With 20 years of quilting experience each, the friends have been creating quilting projects together for years, sharing a love for the hobby and great memories of their school years.
“We have a lot of memories — some we need to forget,” Donelan said with a sparkle in her eye.
To help restore the school where many of those memories were made, the pair created and donated the Lincoln Memories quilt to the Clallam County Historical Society to be raffled off.
The raffle will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at Lincoln School, 926 W. Eighth St., during the Celebration of Clallam County Schools event, which will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day.
Raffle tickets cost $2. They are available at the Clallam County Historical Society Garage Sale from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. today and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets also can be purchased at the Museum at the Carnegie, 207 S. Lincoln St., from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
They’ll also be sold at Lincoln School for two hours before the raffle.
The Celebration of Clallam County Schools will feature an antique-car show, local authors, a hot dog lunch, scrapbooking, notecards, sales of Lincoln School “bricks,” photo displays and live music from Banjo 101, Charlie Grall and Old Time Fiddlers.
Lincoln School was built in 1916 and closed in 1978.
The Clallam County Historical Society purchased the building in 1991, and it has been undergoing renovations to become offices and a museum ever since.
Everything Donelan and Grimsley are doing is for the old school site, they said.
All of the funds will be used for the restoration, they said.
The queen-size quilt features a representation of the brick-fronted school building, with students, a school bus and the name of the school embroidered at the top of the quilt.
The women said they don’t know how to put a value on the quilt.
The materials for the quilt cost about $150, but the sheer number of working hours it takes to create a quilt makes it difficult to establish its worth, they said.
The quilt took about 200 hours of work to create between December 2011 and February 2012.
Donelan spent about 100 hours sewing the quilt panels together, and Grimsley spent another 100 hours hand-quilting the front, lining and backing.
It was a challenge to get the school’s unusual roofline correct, and eventually, they used a scale wooden model of the school created for the historical society as a template, Donelan said.
“Those windows were terrible,” she said, and noted that she spent a lot of time laying out the windows before she got them just right.
Once the fabric design was complete, Donelan turned the materials over to Grimsley, who hand-sewed the patterns that make a quilt a quilt.
“I really enjoy sitting with it on my lap and quilting,” Grimsley said.
The detail work in the blanket isn’t immediately obvious.
When it came to quilting the sky behind the school in the center panel, Grimsley created a nearly invisible pattern of mountains and clouds in the same color as the fabric.
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
