"The family that sews together, stays together.”
Nina Golladay’s three daughters laugh when they hear this statement, but it rings true for them.
“We do all live within a mile of each other,” says Nina’s youngest daughter Kathy Runion. “We’re pretty close.”
Nina, who is 97, learned to sew as a young girl from her mother and grandmother. She started making quilts for Lutheran World Relief as a teenager. Nina is no longer able to keep up with her sewing ministry, but she set a good example. Now the next three generations of Golladay women help keep the quilting group at Mount Zion Lutheran Church in New Market, Virginia, going strong.
Generations of quilters, decades of compassion
“Mom was always sewing,” recalls Nina’s middle daughter Sharon Golladay. “She made most of our clothes when we were little.” To get them involved, Nina helped her girls make doll clothes, then projects for their Home Economics classes. She also made hundreds of LWR Mission Quilts throughout her life — and set her quilting group up for success before she retired.
Kathy explains, “When mom stopped sewing, she started cutting squares. She still has boxes and boxes of squares that we draw from to put tops together. She’s also got a big stock of fabric for us. We don’t have to worry about running out.”
Nina’s daughters make up about half the members of their quilting group, which produces 50 to 100 quilts a year. A bonus member is bubbly 11-year-old Rose Segaline — Nina’s great-granddaughter. Rose and her mother Dorothy, the daughter of Nina’s oldest daughter Sarah Bradfield, help when they can.
Rose says, “During my school summer break, I went with my mom to all the quilting meetings. That was fun. I knotted most of the quilts, and I helped pick out the fabrics for the backs.”
Thank you, Nina, for blessing the world through your sewing and your family!