OPS Quilt Dedicated to Eleanor Garrish
For just $1 you can buy a raffle ticket to win this beautiful queen-size sampler quilt lovingly handmade by the Ocracoke Needle and Thread Club (a.k.a. the Quilters.) The quilters donated it to Ocracoke Preservation Society for their annual fundraising quilt raffle.
Get your tickets at the OPS Museum, where you can see the quilt in person, or by calling 252-928-7375. Tickets are only $1 each – or 6 for $5. What a bargain! The winning ticket will be drawn at the annual OPS Wassail Party in December.
This year, the island quilters are honoring one of their own with a special dedication:
This sampler quilt is dedicated to our quilter emeritus, Eleanor Garrish.
Eleanor was born in January 1916 in Minnesota. Although she trained to be a teacher, her varied interests, wanderlust, and marriage to a Naval officer led her to many ports. She worked in an insurance office, watching boats sail down the Mississippi River. She was living in San Francisco in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. During most of World War II she lived and worked in the Panama Canal Zone, taking the opportunity to travel in Central and South America.
At the end of the war she returned to Minnesota via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and New York City. She stayed in Minnesota only a year before moving to Hawaii where she met Chief Petty Officer Willard J. Garrish, an Ocracoke Native. She followed Jake back to California where he was stationed, and they were married in 1948. Their son Jim was born in 1949.
After Jake’s retirement from the Navy, they lived and worked in Maryland. They moved to Ocracoke in 1976 and settled in a home they had built near Jake’s parents. After he died in 1998, Eleanor continued her activities in the Ocracoke United Methodist Church, as a volunteer at the Ocracoke Preservation Society museum, and as a very productive quilter. She still lives in her Ocracoke home and has been a mentor and friend to all of us. We consider her an island treasure. One of the last blocks she made for our projects is included near the center of this quilt and has been embroidered with her name.
The Needle and Thread Club, Ocracoke, North Carolina, 2015
