Every quilt tells a story —who made it, the name of the pattern, who it was made for and the clothes it was made from.
But for Judy Wampler, the stories came first.
On Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5, Judy will present her “Little House” quilt program, “From Wisconsin to Missouri,” during the 2025 Clinton Quilt Walk. A former school teacher who lives on a farm near Carthage, Mo., Judy has made two and half dozen quilts based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, at least one for every book in the series.
“The majority are from ‘Little House in the Big Woods,’” she said. “The stories illustrate so many aspects of pioneer life.”
The “Little House” books are based on Laura’s peripatetic childhood, which started in a log cabin in Pepin Lake, Wisconsin, in 1867. Laura ended up living in white-frame farmhouse on an apple orchard in Mansfield, Mo., where she wrote the book series, a slightly-fictionalized version of her life, when she was in her mid-60s.
Judy had not read the “Little House” books when she was growing up in Pierce City, Mo. She was introduced to the stories by Jane Decker, Historian of the Missouri Council of the International Reading Association, when Jane visited the school where Judy was teaching. The books chronicle the last half of the 19th century through the eyes of a young girl, when Laura’s family and others were pushing westward in covered wagons across the Great Plains, looking for a new start. Recognizing that the stories would make a good vehicle into that era for her grade-school students, Judy read the books to her classes, and started an after-school “Little House” reading group that did activities from the books.
“I used the Little House books to teach many of the social studies objectives that were part of the fourth-grade curriculum,” she said.
Judy made her first Little House quilt after she retired from teaching in 2005. Her daughter had opened a quilt shop in Carthage, Block by Block, where Judy helped out. One day, Judy saw a pattern, ‘Grandma’s Dancing Shoes,” that reminded her of Grandma Ingalls’ ‘dance-off’ in “Little House in the Big Woods.”
“That got me thinking of other quilts I could make from stories in the books,” Judy said.
“Laura’s Pumpkin Patch” quilt was inspired when Judy was rereading a story from “On the Banks of Plum Creek.” Another Plum Creek quilt shows Pa driving a wagon and stopping to wave to Laura.
In 2010, Judy and a friend decided to make a week-long road trip to visit the places where Laura and her family — Pa, Ma, sisters Mary and Carrie and their brindle bulldog, Jack — had lived. The car trip took them to Pepin, Wisconsin, where there is a replica of the cabin in the Big Woods where Laura spent her first years.
Judy and her friend stopped at Burr Oak, Iowa, along the way, then after Pepin, drove through Minnesota on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway. They visited the spot on Plum Creek where the Ingalls family lived in a home dug out of the banks of Plum Creek. The home is no longer there, Judy said, but you can see an indentation where it was.
“I stood and listened to the wind blow through the prairie grass, like Laura did,” Judy said.
The most well-known Laura Ingalls Wilder book is “Little House on the Prairie,” which was made into a television show that ran from 1974 to 1982.
Judy and her friend ended their pilgrimage in De Smet, South Dakota, at that time the Dakotas Territory where Laura’s family homesteaded. The Ingalls had to spend a winter in town, where they were shut off in a blizzard with little food and Ma showed Laura how to make lamps out of a saucer, a button, a piece of thread and scrap of fabric dipped in wheel-axle grease.
That’s also where Laura met and married her husband, Almanzo Wilder. The couple tried farming in the Dakotas, but were defeated by plagues of locusts, so packed blankets, cornmeal and other basic items into a wagon — a recurring theme in Laura’s life — and eventually ended up in Mansfield, Mo., east of Springfield. There, they bought 40 acres they named Rocky Ridge Farm and planted an apple orchard. Laura started writing, and Almanzo built a farmhouse. Laura died in Mansfield in 1957. Rocky Ridge Farm is now the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum, open to the public March 1 through November 15.
Judy has traveled to schools, guilds and civic organizations to share the “Little House” stories, adding quilts to the program. Two years ago, she was on a quilt store ‘Shop Hop’ and visited the White Flower Quilt Shop in Clinton, where she met the owner, Mary Cupp, one of the Quilt Walk organizers.
White Flower partners with Clinton Main Street to host the Clinton Quilt Walk, which started in 2000, and is free. Receive a guide to stores displaying quilts around the Square at White Flower Quilt Ship, 140 W. Jefferson, and pick up a free pattern for a quilt block at each store to make the 2025 Quilt Walk Quilt. The Walk is from 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day. See a finished version of the Quilt Walk quilt at the White Flower Quilt Shop, on the southwest corner of the Square. Contact White Flower at 660-492-5379 for more information. Stores displaying quilts will stamp your Quilt Walk ‘passport,’ which can be turned in at White Flower to enter a drawing.
Judy’s presentation, “From Wisconsin to Missouri” will be at the WW & H Exchange Building, next door to the main entrance of the Henry County Museum, 203 W. Franklin. The Exchange is part of the museum complex, just off the northwest corner of the Square. Judy will be showing “Little House” quilts at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 4, and repeating the program at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 5. The presentation is free, as is parking on the streets around the museum, as well as in the parking lot across from the museum’s main entrance in the Adair Annex and around the Clinton Square.
Judy lives on the Century Farm near Carthage that originally belonged to her husband’s great-grandparents. She uses a sewing machine to make quilt blocks, which are pieced, some with embroidered elements. She has a long-arm sewing machine to quilt her work. The hardest quilt she ever made was “Cabin by Pepin Lake,” she said, which she made from a pattern from the book, “Not Your Grandmother’s Log Cabin.”
She also brings household artifacts to her programs from the “Little House” books, ones people may never have seen — a spider skillet, a candle mold, a hog scraper, animal traps and a mold like Pa used to make his own bullets. One of Judy’s quilts is a friendship quilt called “If Laura Had a Facebook Page,” with embroidered ‘signatures’ of characters in the books, including that of Charlotte, the homemade rag doll Laura received one Christmas. Judy even has a Charlotte rag doll she brings to her program.
Judy, who has a Master of Science in Education from Missouri State University, gives programs on other authors of children’s books— “Stepping into Literature Block by Block” and Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” She also gives programs on Underground Railroad quilt blocks, and “Seeing Red and Loving It,” on Redwork embroidery quilts.
For more information about Judy Wampler, go to storytellingwithquilts.wordpress.com.
