Sue
Rothhaar is country raised and bred. She was born in the village of New
Washington and graduated from Buckeye Central High School. Sue lovingly
describes her home life, “Art and Lola Eckstein had 3
daughters of which I am the oldest. All three of us have acquired Mom’s love of
sewing and quilting. First it was sewing for the family and now it is more
quilting. Mom has had to give up quilting (at age 93) because her hands shake
so much she pricks her fingers. So now she crochets.”
This
family’s roots are deeply entwined with the Pietist Church. The quaint brick
church stands just outside the village of Chatfield, its steeple and
stained-glass windows greeting travelers as they motor north on Rt. 4.
A
large part of rural upbringing includes joining a 4-H club.
When Sue became a 4-H member at age 10, she took this pledge:
When Sue became a 4-H member at age 10, she took this pledge:
I pledge my head
to clearer thinking,
My heart to
greater loyalty,
My hands to
larger service, and
My health to
better living,
For my club, my
community, my country and my world.
For
Sue, those are more than just words spoken from rote at the beginning of
meetings; they are principles that have remained a vital part of her life.
It was in
4-H that Sue learned to sew. Sue
stayed in 4-H until she was 18, acquiring many skills along the way.
Life by Design
Sue
became a designer at an early age. Her mother, Lola, made clothes for the family. Sue says that
there was
always a wide array
of scraps
of fabrics to spark
the imagination. Sue’s early sewing projects were doll clothes that she
fashioned from fabric left-over from her mom’s sewing projects.
After
graduation from high school, Sue went to college to become a nurse. Sue
remembers making her first quilt while in nursing school. She designed it by
tracing animal shapes from coloring books and embroidering them on 8 x10”
squares of plain fabric. This quilt was
saved until she married Ken Rothhaar and they had their first child.
Sue
says that both her mother and mother-in-law quilted all the time, and that she
often joined them in “family quilting bees” to quilt the tops that they had
stitched. By then, Sue was working in a doctor's office. Since most of her sewing time was for her children, her own quilt
was a simple one made of sewing together squares of fabrics to use as a throw
on the sofa.
When Sue retired from her nursing career, her hands did not stay idle for long; her
artistic juices led her to design art quilts. To date, she’s designed and made six large
quilts and six wall hangings. Sue says that she still makes clothes, these days
for her grandkids. Those lucky kids have all received quilted grow charts,
designed by Sue, of course.
Heart to
Greater Loyalty
 |
| Mural on one of the Sunday school rooms of the school that the Pietist Church in Chatfield converted to their new church home. |
After
the dust settled and the school had been successfully converted to a church,
Sue says “the members were amazed at what God was doing
through them for the ministry of the Pietist church”. To make the
new building look less like a school and more like their beloved brick building,
the volunteer designers used the color scheme of the interior of the old
church, and brought over some of the loose furniture.
But
still….something was missing.
The
windows.
Sue’s
designing mind went to work, and she came up with a solution and a surprise.
Tomorrow, read the Solution and the Surprise
Marcheta *keeping you in stitches
No comments:
Post a Comment