This Wayne Elementary School project was inspired by a quilt which was recently donated to the Wayne historical collection by Evelyn Walton Randall. With eighty-one embroidered squares, the 1926 quilt was made by twenty-five primary grade students at what then was called the Wayne Village School.

     Evelyn Walton Randall remembered that her stepmother, Edith Riggs Walton, sewed the eighty one squares together. The quilt was in use in their home, which is today known as Deer Brook Farm on the Walton Road (formerly the North Pond Road).
 
     Today's third and fourth graders interviewed Priscilla Berry Stevenson about the 1926 quilt, primary school teacher Maude Bridges, and the history of the Wayne Village School.  Priscilla Stevenson remembers the embroidery as "busy work" assigned by their teacher Maude Bridges.  The school was located on the site of the present-day Cary Memorial Library.  Miss Bridges had four grades in one room in 1926.   

     These former Wayne Village students embroidered squares for the original quilt: Evelyn Walton, Priscilla Berry, Bertha Manter, Homer Lincoln, Roger Stinchfield, Joseph Stetson, Edna Gott, Thelma Lovejoy, Stella Gott, Henry Boynton, Evelyn Fournier, Preston Lovejoy, Beatrice Olliffe, Donald Wright, Harold Fournier, Wilfred Paradis, Waldo Lincoln, Maurice Newcombe, Arlene Parker, George Harrington, Elbridge Harrington, Leroy Harrington, William Frost, Carolyn Turner and Melvin Buzzell.   

     This past winter, Wayne's third and fourth graders started their own redwork squares for a new quilt.  On Tuesday mornings from February until June, the redwork volunteers assisted the students with their embroidery.  Each student stitched their name and the outline of a leaf from a tree that is native to Wayne. Although the two quilt designs are different, the stitch is the same one that Miss Bridges taught her students seventy-five years ago.     

     The Wayne Elementary School is grateful to the Randall family, Simons Photographic, and all of the community volunteers who assisted the students this spring with their redwork embroidery.  This community project was cosponsored by the Wayne Historical Society and was funded by a New Century Community Program grant, a program of the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine Arts Commission.   
(July, 2001)
1926 quilt: Wayne Village School               2001 quilt: Wayne Elementary   
                                                                       School- native trees