Cherry Country Quilters for sale; honoring Linda Mead with COVID quilt
Photo: Linda Mead (left) poses with the third-place winner (identity and year unknown) of the “Ugly Duckling Contest” who made a beautiful quilted wall hanging from an “ugly piece of fabric”.
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Vickie Hurst lost her 75-year-old mother Linda Mead to COVID-19 two days before the end of 2020. Linda was the owner and inspiration behind Cherry Country Quilters, which opened in downtown Suttons Bay in 2014. Vickie, along with Renee Wegman, who now runs the quilt shop, want to honor Linda and at least all 16 of the Coronavirus casualties of Leelanau County with a Commemorative Covid Quilt.
Vickie hopes to sell the business, so her mother’s legacy and love for quilting live on. Nicole Anderson from Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors is helping to coordinate the transaction.
“It reminds me of when my grandmother turned 75,” Vickie recalls. “My mom and her two sisters sent every female family member a square of fabric and asked them to sew or paint the square with a motif related to ‘family.’ The squares were combined into a quilt that became a wall hanging after we presented it to Grandma on her 75th birthday in November 1990.”
Linda Mead sewed and ran fabric stores throughout her life. “When she was learning needlework at 4 or 5 years old she accidentally sewed a square to her skirt!” Vickie laughs. When Vickie was 5, Linda had a shop in Traverse City where the Grand Traverse Pie Company is now. A few years later she moved to a new store in Old Town called the Sewing Basket behind the barbershop across from Maxbauer. “She taught many classes there using the ‘stretch and sew’ technique. When she got out of that she was in advertising for local TV stations, but one day she wanted to give her sister a teddy bear. When she didn’t like the quality of what was available, she decided to make her own. That evolved into selling high-quality teddy bear making stuff, and then she started teaching classes in how to make teddy bears, and then she started teaching people how to teach their own classes in teddy bear making!”
When she sold that business, Linda and her husband Gordon hit the road. They travelled the world, including several trips to Japan, where a teddy bear making school was opened in her honor. She even published a book titled The ABC’s of Making Teddy Bears (Martingale and Company, 2000). When the market collapsed they got a camper and began living and working in National Parks as volunteers. All the while she was honing her quilting skills. “She looked at buying a quilt shop out west,” Vickie says, “but they wanted to be closer to family, so they came back here and she opened the Cherry Country Quilters in 2014.”
During this time Vickie was becoming the dining room manager at La Becasse in Burdickville. When Guillaume and Brook Hazael-Massieux took over from John and Peachy Rentenbach in 2005, Vickie was the first new hire at the French country restaurant in 15 years. She was a part-time server then, but when Guillaume got busy running Bistro Fou Fou in Traverse City, he needed someone with experience and know-how to manage La Becasse, and Vickie has become a fixture there ever since.
“After our mother died one of my sisters sent a text with a link to an article about someone in California making a commemorative Covid quilt,” said Vickie. “It reminded me of my grandmother’s quilt. My sister said ‘We can do this!’ When we put the idea on the Cherry Country Quilters’ Facebook page we got an overwhelming response. It’s personal, it hits home, to honor 16 people in Leelanau, plus other folks who have lost family. This is just a local project.”
Contact Renee Wegman, who worked closely with Linda at Cherry County Quilters, for a square of a certain size and fabric.
“Everyone there is very creative, and I think they are doing a fantastic job,” said Vickie. “This really was a passion of my mother’s, so I want it to continue. I just don’t have the same talent. We want someone to take over who shares that passion and skill.”
Check out CherryCountryQuilters.com or visit their Facebook page for more information.
In our May 13 print edition, this story incorrectly called Linda Mead by the wrong last name, “Linda Hunt”. We regret the error.
