(photo:  Walt and Helen Crew display the bicentennial quilt she made to celebrate Louisiana’s 200th anniversary. After being featured at the Louisiana Bicentennial Celebration’s opening ceremony on June 30, it will be donated to the Louisiana Area Historical Museum.)

A history-themed quilt designed by Helen Crew will displayed long into the future. The coverlet will be featured during the bicentennial celebration’s opening ceremony at 11 a.m. June 30. It will then be donated for permanent display at the Louisiana Area Historical Museum at 304 Georgia Street. “I get excited about it,” Crew said. “I think it’s all worth it.” The quilt measures six feet wide by almost seven-and-a-half feet tall. It has 48 panels arranged in eight rows depicting businesses, organizations, churches, buildings, places and people influential in Louisiana. Crew used contributed and personally-designed panels based upon paintings, images and photos. A few squares were digitized to make them clearer.

“It came together really well,” she said. Crew started quilting regularly after retiring as an educator in 2002. She designed one for last year’s solar eclipse, and decided to proceed with the bicentennial spread. Advertisements for donated panels were placed in March and Crew began stitching in April. She used cotton quilting fabric and a machine to put it together. The project was a labor of love. Crew is a Pike County native whose family farm includes land upon which she has operated the Cozy C Campground along U.S. 54 between Louisiana and Bowling Green with her husband, Walt, since 1996.

“It’s the self-satisfaction and helping the community out,” said Crew, who is appreciative of the time and effort contributors made. Panels include the easily-recognizable, such as the Champ Clark Bridge, Stark Bro’s Nurseries and Orchards Company, Pike County Memorial Hospital, 13th Amendment author John Brooks Henderson, La Cross Lumber and the community’s houses of worship. But there are also more obscure images, such as the Jewish cemetery, Lincoln School, the button factory, Buffum Tool Company and a farm scene.

And Crew couldn’t resist paying tribute to the Bigfoot-like creature named “Mo Mo the Missouri Monster,” which captured the world’s attention when it was reported traipsing through the woods along Louisiana’s Star Hill in the early 1970s. “I thought ‘We have to have Mo Mo,’” she said. “We have to have a legend.” When it comes to challenges, Crew hasn’t sewn things up just yet. She and Walt have been married for 53 years, and she’s promised him a wedding ring quilt with a star on it. “I’ve started,” she said. “It’s just a matter of putting it together.”