Pat Massey’s hands work almost like a machine.

Sew. Sew. Loop. Cut. Rethread. Sew.

So do Viola Noyse’s, Jackie Thomas’ and Margie Seuferling’s.

Methodically, and like it’s second nature, the Immaculate Conception Church quilting group members — eight of them on Friday — work together to put a backing on the blue and white flowered quilt top in front of them.

It’s the second quilt the group is working on for Shannon Mandle Ozbun, a descendent of the quilt’s original maker, Essie Gates Palmer.

The women, who quilt together about once a week on varying projects, are at ease, laughing about nothing in particular in the basement of the Immaculate Conception Church.

Glad their work on the first of Ozbun’s two quilts is done, they are well into working on finishing the second. And it’s only fitting that this quilting group is the one to finish the work that Ozbun plans to give to her mother.

“Our ancestors probably knew each other,” Ozbun says to the ladies.

Ozbun’s mother, Letitia Palmer Mandle Ralstin, had the two quilt tops — the blue and white flowered one and a postage stamp design — tucked away in drawers for more than 75 years.

When Ozbun found the tops, and after a bit of researching her family’s history, she found that Essie Palmer was born in Miami County in 1872, just a few miles from where the Immaculate Conception quilters’ work.

She was the daughter of Charles Francis Gates and Laura Doud Gates, and the granddaughter of Anson and Mariah Doud, all early Kansas territorial settlers who homesteaded in New Lancaster, near 389th Street and Spring Valley Road, in 1859.

“This will be a special memory for ever and ever,” Ozbun told the quilters when she picked up the postage stamp quilt Friday afternoon.

The quilt, which was quite fragile — a few quilters throughout the state turned the project down — was to be a Mother’s Day present from Ozbun to Ralstin on Sunday.

“You should feel so good about what you did,” Ozbun said.

The postage stamp quilt took the Immaculate Conception quilters about five months to complete, said Ruth Fladung, “Twice as long as it normally takes.”

The quilt was made out of feed sacks, which were quite decorative at the time.

“That’s what they used to make quilts from,” Fladung said.

The Immaculate Conception quilters — Jean French, Jean Skeens, Geri Harlow, Elaine Heck, Seuferling, Massey, Fladung, Thomas and Noyse — are always working on one project or another, but they always make time for a little socializing.

“It’s fun,” Heck said. “It’s a dying art. It’s too bad more people don’t do this.”

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