How Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party became a 95-year-old Alamance County tradition
One day a year, the typically stark walls of the Eli Whitney Recreation Center are draped in colorful quilts with vibrant geometric patterns and patches of soft flowy florals. Quilt blankets aren’t the only ones on display. Garments like coats, jackets and bags of every shape and size, each their own intricate designs, hang alongside the decorative textiles on metal and wooden frames.
Every year on the first Thursday of April, Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party is held at the former Eli Whitney School gymnasium. Late historian and master quilter Erma Kirkpatrick believed the gathering was the oldest continuously running quilting event in the country.
In the 1920s, Ernest Peter Dixon, a local teacher and a Quaker, spearheaded the consolidation of five rural single-classroom schoolhouses in southeast Alamance County. Before an actual school was built, students met in the only local building large enough to hold them: An unused cotton gin. Hence, the name Eli Whitney School, honoring the inventor of the cotton gin. In an effort to get the newly joined rural communities to engage with each other, Dixon proposed a social gathering centered around the craft of quiltmaking.
And so, Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party was born.
The first party in 1931 brought together local farm families for a day of sewing and sharing.
During the school's operational years, the quilting party was deeply integrated into the students' educational experience. On the day of the event, teachers would let classes out, and students would march through the gym to watch the quiltmaking in real-time. Students could even sit down and practice sewing a few stitches alongside their grandmothers and aunts before heading back to their lessons. Even when the Eli Whitney School was absorbed into a larger school in 1974, and the original school building was torn down, under the leadership of Pat Bailey, Mildred Guthrie, and Nannie Lou McBane, volunteers ensured the event survived.
The gathering eventually moved into the old school's remaining brick gymnasium, which now serves as a rec center. It features three quilt blocks on its front facade, honoring the building’s quilting legacy. “It's just one of [those] deals where it needs to be kept, you know, go forward with it,” said Eric Holt, one of Mildred Guthrie’s grandchildren and a descendant of the Holt family that owned the Alamance Mills. “People need to understand how stuff was made back then. This is how they got by, other than farming and whatnot around here. They made quilts!"
Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party Celebrates 95 Years
Today, the use of the Eli Whitney gym has evolved to accommodate the modern iteration of the quilting party – a spontaneous and entirely free, live quilting exhibit. Last week, the 2026 gathering marked the tradition’s 95th anniversary.
“These [quilts] aren't for sale. This is kind of like an exhibit, like a museum, if you will,” said Patsy Bailey Allard, an organizer whose mother Pat Bailey was one of the three “queen pins.” The purely volunteer-driven nature of the event continually surprises newcomers who expect vendors and entry fees. “There's no money that you can exchange here except you could buy a raffle ticket,” she added, talking about the quilt that is raffled to benefit local quilting guilds.
Astrid Monar, Nannie Lou’s granddaughter, is 32 years old and has attended almost every quilting party since she was born. She no longer lives in Alamance County but visits from Colorado to help her mother, Wendy McBane. Monar’s siblings and their families are from Western North Carolina and Connecticut and attended this year’s event.
Monar is in charge of greeting and checking in guests. At this year’s event, her niece, 6-year-old Alice Monar, sat beside her. Check-in is an important assignment because it’s how organizers keep track of attendance, which typically averages between 350 and 400 people, with around 100 quilts on display, according to Bailey Allard. Once folks are checked in, they can start perusing the quilts exhibited. They can also browse the “Sharing Table,” which operates on a "bring one, take one" basis for swapping quilting books, magazines and scrap fabrics.
Some pieces on display throughout the gym are finely-worked historical heirlooms, while others are plain blankets. They each contain a tag with the name of the quilting pattern used, the materials and a bit of their history. In the middle of the building, Barbie Bailey Smith guides passersby through a special exhibit, which this year was titled "It Started With A Quilt…" The curation collection explores how patchwork and quilting extend beyond traditional bed coverings. “Quilts started out as a functional art form for people to stay warm and then to make clothes and wear clothes. And now that is truly considered an art form," she said.
Beyond the exhibition, the gathering remains an active workspace. Attendees can pull up a chair to work on current projects or add stitches to a large community quilt set up in an old-fashioned frame.
A little after noon, the community gathers for a potluck meal, and the event’s organizers hold the raffle.
Event details
Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party is held every year on the first Thursday of April.
Next year’s gathering is on Thursday, April 1, 2027.
Doors open at 8:30 a.m., and quilts are on display until 1 p.m.
The potluck lunch begins by 12:45 p.m.
The event is completely free and open to the public.
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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