October 8, 2001
Donated quilt paints a big picture
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___MURPHY--If a picture paints a thousand words, Mary Cole recently quilted about 73,000 of them. And that might just about tell the story she was attempting to illustrate.
___The 84-year-old recently combined her artistic talents as she painted pictures of the facilities of the 72 churches that make up Collin Baptist Association as well as theassociational office and then quilted the individual squares into a pictorial walk through history.
MARY COLE poses with the quilt she will present to Collin Baptist Association Oct. 15 depicting all 72 churches in the association. The 84-year-old produced the quilt, including painting each church building by hand, in less than six weeks. She is shown with her son, James, and Rick Ballard, executive director of Collin Baptist Association.
___Cole has organized the quilt with the oldest churches at the top, beginning with Bethlehem Baptist Church of Farmersville, founded in 1843, and the newcomers at the bottom. The associational offices are the centerpiece of the quilt. Above each rendition, Cole has painted the name of the church and the year of its founding.
___Cole will present the quilt to the association at its annual meeting Oct. 15 at Culleoka Baptist Church. The churches involved will treasure the gift, Executive Director Rick Ballard said.
___"They are going to be in awe," he predicted. "It's such a striking thing, an amazing thing. It's obviously a labor of love."
___Even though Cole has only lived in the area since April, the quilt grew out of her love for her pastor, Mark Forrest of Murphy Road Baptist Church. "He's real nice and sweet, and he's taken the time to come and visit me, which is pretty nice to come and see an old lady," she said.
___Her pastor is humbled by her gesture.
___"I'm a little embarrassed, but I think it's just wonderful. She's such a special lady," he said.
___This is the fourth time Cole has made a quilt of this type, and her work has been done in as many states. However, there are several reasons the Texas quilt was more difficult than the ones she handcrafted in Mississippi, Georgia and Arkansas.
___One of the contributing factors is that her arthritis has grown more advanced. "I used to do this at the table, but now I have to keep it in my lap sitting on the couch," she explained. "That makes it a lot harder, but you do what you have to do."
___Another hurdle was that Collin Association is much larger than any of the previous ones she's done, so there were many more churches to paint. In addition, the association had few photographs of its churches, and the ones it did have were black and white and were of no use to a painter without knowledge of the color scheme. A few churches mailed Cole photographs, but it fell to her son, James, to drive a couple of hundred miles through the county for the remainder.
___"James is the real unsung hero of this project," Ballard acknowledged.
___Despite the large number of churches, which translated into a large number of paintings, she finished the project, including handstitching it together, in less than six weeks. She worked many long days, and even after going to bed the project was not far from her. "At night I'd just dream about churches, churches, churches," she said.
___Her son affirmed her work ethic. "You remember the commercial 'We are driven'? Well, that's her," he said.
___The older frame church buildings were much easier to paint than the newer ones with brick and fancy windows, the artist said.
___Cole, who looks many years younger than her age, says she always has tried to stay active. Throughout her lifetime she has made 154 quilts, but she has kept only one--"my pretty one" as she calls it--that uses an apple tree to portray her family tree.
___Now Cole has planted a beautiful seed among the family of churches in Collin Association, Ballard said. "This is going to hang out in the lobby of the association, and people are going to come and look at this as a work of art. But it also will let them trace our association's history up to this point."
Get printer-friendly version of this story
Send this story to a friend
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
