Barn full of fabric a Texas woman left behind will now bring warmth to Bowie families

Verna Mae Brashear is still warming the hearts of her community a year after her death.

The Bowie woman was a seamstress who created intricate and elegant handmade quilts. These quilts were rarely for her. She made them to keep her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren warm.

“We’ll never go cold,” Brashear’s daughter Jan Browning said.

When Brashear died at the age of 86 early last year, she left behind hundreds of quilt design blocks, mountains of fabric and numerous sewing supplies.

Brashear’s family considered donating to quilting shops, but decided instead to donate the fabric and quilt blocks to The Hills Quilting Ladies, a group from the Hills Church in Fort Worth. The idea was for the quilting group to use Brashear’s surplus supply of fabric to create quilts for a local organization to give to women, children and families.

After months of work, The Hills Quilting Ladies handed over to the Brashear family over a dozen quilts made with the donated fabric.

Last week, the Brashears gave the quilts to the Bowie Mission, an organization that assist families in need with food, free clothing and money for medications.

The Bowie Mission was near and dear to Brashear’s heart.

“They were real tickled with them,” Browning said when the family donated the quilts. “I told somebody that I wanted to keep them all myself, but I knew they were going to a good cause.”

Catching the quilting bug

Brashear was born in Fort Worth on March 29, 1935, the seventh of 10 children. The growing family eventually moved north to Henrietta, where Brashear would graduate high school in 1953 and meet future husband, Bobbie Brashear Sr.

The couple married in 1954 and moved to Houston, where Brashear Sr. was on a basketball scholarship to Rice University. It was in Houston where 20-year-old Brashear crafted her first quilt, Browing said.

Brashear’s mother and grandmother were quilters so she grew up watching them lay out and sew blocks together. But since her family was firmly planted in North Texas, she didn’t have a mentor nearby.

But that didn’t stop Brashear from teaching herself the craft.

“She was very intricate and very precise in everything she did,” Browning said.

The family would eventually move to Bowie. Along with quilting and raising a family, Brashear worked as Bowie Junior High School math teacher for 28 years.

The quilting bug stuck with Brashear for the rest of her life. She turned half of an outbuilding in their homestead in Bowie into her “quilting barn,” Browning said. It was there where Brashear would design and create her quilts, incorporating a variety of fabrics and colors into each piece.

It takes both a mathematical and artistic mind to create quilts, from cutting the fabric to deciding where to insert the pieces to make a pattern. And Brashear had both a surplus of fabric to choose from and the mind to create designs, Browning said. The seamstress enjoyed collecting different types of fabrics and colors, all stored in her private fortress of quilting.

“She had enough material to open a store,” Browning said.

A heart to give

The amount of of quilting and sewing supplies Brashear left behind overwhelmed her family.

But they knew they had to do something about it.

Both Brashear and her husband were big supporters of the Bowie Mission, making donations and helping out when they could.

This heart to give had been taught to the Brashear children from early on. But finding the right recipient for Brashear’s leftover supplies challenged the siblings.

The family caught a break when Browning heard about The Hills Quilting Ladies and the proverbial light bulb flickered on.

“It kind of all just fit and was perfect,” Browning said.

The Hills Quilting Ladies has been sewing since 1984 at what was then called the Richland Hills Church of Christ, now The Hills Church.

The group started after a missionary visited the church and told a story about a group of “mountain people” in Africa who lived in cold temperatures and could use a little warmth. The group of church women banded together and have been quilting ever since.

Currently, the group donates quilts to My Health My Resources of Tarrant County, Alliance for Children, Valiant Hearts in Colleyville and several family services division’s in Mansfield, North Richland Hills and Haltom City.

Led by Frances Peck, The Hills Quilting Ladies leader and organizer, the group jumped at the chance to acquire Brashear’s leftover material. The group picked up countless Walmart bags stuffed with fabric from the quilting barn, Browning said.

After acquiring the supplies, Peck and her group of over 30 volunteers got to work brainstorming designs and admiring the patterns Brashear had created. For months, the group worked on the quilts, even referring to them as a “Mimi quilt,” given Brashear’s family nickname for her.

The group has donated over a dozen quilts using Brashear’s materials to the Bowie Mission.

“Verna Mae made true artwork with her quilts. She used only the highest quality fabrics. Our quilting group has thoroughly enjoyed sewing with such lovely fabric,” Peck said in a statement. “Verna Mae’s passion for quilting will live on in each quilt that incorporates bits of her fabric. It is a beautiful legacy that she probably never even imagined, but would be very pleased to know exists.”

She’d be ‘thrilled that it was for such a good cause’

Quilting had been a long part of Brashear’s life, earning a few honors along the way.

In 1997, one of Brashear’s quilt block designs was selected by the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Common Threads of Texas Quilt, which displays each year at the State Fair. After 9/11, Country Home magazine put together a “Show Your Colors, America” project asking its readers to send in patriotic quilt squares to auction for charity.

Brashear was glad to give. These two moments have become among her proudest when it came to quilting, Browning said.

Brashear’s art form will live on for year’s to come, not just in physical form but in the heart’s of those touched by her warmth.

“I know she would be thrilled that it was for such a good cause to help keep people warm,” Browning said. “Quilts are something warm to wrap around you and let somebody know that somebody cares for them.”