Had to drop by and post a story of a little woman from Missouri who quilted very special quilts. She drew pictures of her famous baseball stars and sent them for autographs. It was a different time when so many of them were actually signed and returned. She died with no children and lots of heirs. So her nieces and nephews are putting these quilts, even the one that hung in the Baseball Hall of Fame, up for bid.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/A3C66EF409C931B9862576CD0016B431?OpenDocumentBaseball quilt is going, going...
Phyllis LaPlant of Farmington with a quilt titled "My Favorite Baseball Stars," made by her late aunt Clara Schmitt Rothmeier. The quilt, finished in 1965, contains stitchings of actual Mjor League players' signatures that Schmitt mostly solicited herself as well as hand-stitched profound likenesses of them. It took Schmitt 10 years to make. (Christian Gooden/P-D)BY STEPHEN DEERE
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/17/2010
Clara Schmitt Rothmeier could have told you a story about each of the 340 signatures on her baseball quilt — even the tiny ink stain on one of the cloth pieces.
Half a century ago, Rothmeier stitched together 44 portraits of baseball legends, along with hundreds of other players' signatures.
When she was alive, she considered giving it to a museum, or a single family member. But which one? What if it wound up in a basement collecting dust? And what was it worth anyway?
After all, it took her 10 years to sew the quilt, and it once hung in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
On Saturday, it will go to the highest bidder.
Rothmeier's other baseball memorabilia, including more than 10,000 baseball cards, other quilts and signed pictures, will also be up for sale at an auction in Union.
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The proceeds will be split among nearly 50 relatives. That's the way Rothmeier, who died last year at age 78 and who never had children of her own, wanted it.
"We would like for it to stay in the family," Travis Blankenship, Rothmeier's great nephew, said of her most famous quilt. "But you can't cut it up and split it 46 ways."
Some family members plan on bidding on it themselves.
"I've got a number in mind," said Phyllis LaPlant, one of Rothmeier's nieces. "I truly believe it will bring a lot more than what I am willing to pay for it."
Gene Blankenship, one of Rothmeier's nephews, said the quilt has been valued by different appraisers "anywhere from $10,000 to six figures."
Michael Barnes of the Barnes Sports Group, a business that represents buyers and sellers of sports collectibles, plans to bid on two of Rothmeier's quilts for a client — the one that hung in the Hall of Fame and another with signed portraits of the 1955 World Series champion Brooklyn Dodgers.
Barnes has researched sports auctions for the past five years, looking for sales of similar items. He couldn't find anything.
"It's going to be a stab in the dark in terms of what those are going to be valued at," he said. "They are just so unique."
LONGTIME BASEBALL FAN
Rothmeier was the second-youngest of 11 children, growing up in rural Franklin County.
She fell in love with baseball almost as soon as she could walk, family members say. Her father, William Jacob Schmitt, who was on a Pittsburgh Pirates minor league team in 1917, played catch with his kids until dark. When she was in her 20s, Rothmeier played first base on an amateur softball team in St. Louis and then got an offer to play for a fast pitch team in Springfield, Ill. To pass the time between games, she sewed.
As she got older, Rothmeier looked after her nieces and nephews, especially since she didn't have kids of her own.
"She used to sew us clothes," LaPlant said. "If she was taking my brothers to a rodeo, she would make them all shirts to match."
Rothmeier used to tell people she got the idea for baseball quilts from her sister, who sewed a quilt with a Cardinals emblem on it when Rothmeier was 4.
"I wanted it, but my mom wouldn't let me have it," Rothmeier told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997. "My sister died when I was 6, and later on, when I really got interested in baseball, I asked my mom about the quilt again. But she thought it should be for my older brothers and sisters. So in the mid-1950s, I decided to start my own."
She drew 8-by-10-inch portraits of 61 of her favorite players, embroidering over them and sending them off to be autographed, along with a letter explaining her project and a self-addressed stamped envelope.
She got 44 portraits back. She called the quilt "My Favorite Baseball Stars."
Joe Adcock of the Milwaukee Braves was the first to sign his portrait. Stan Musial was next. Soon, Rothmeier had the signed, hand-sewn portraits of stars such as Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams.
