Sarasota Amish community auctions quilts to raise money for Haiti
Hand stitching a king-sized quilt takes two weeks — working 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and resting on Sundays. If 12 women work together, it will take two days, but the stitches won’t match. So it’s best to do it yourself.
This calculation comes from Ida Graber, 65, who made her first quilt when she was 13. (She still has it.)
Quilts are a part of Amish culture, she said. “It’s a lost art.”
On Saturday, Robarts Arena was filled with hundreds of German-speaking people from around the U.S., bidding on quilts and Amish furniture.
The 23rd annual Florida Haiti Benefit Auction ran Friday and Saturday and raised an estimated $300,000.
The auction is a collaborative effort of the Amish and Mennonite communities of Sarasota to bring relief to the hungry, sick and the homeless people of Haiti. The Sarasota auction is one of seven in the United States.
Tim Miller, chairman of the Florida Haiti Benefit Auction, visits Haiti three or four times a year, teaching people how to farm. He grew up in Ohio and moved to Sarasota, with its strong Amish and Mennonite community.
Amish women around the U.S. made quilts for the auction, some of which sold for more than $1,000.
“I've always been intrigued by quilts,” Miller said. “Growing up, we weren’t allowed to be artists. We were not allowed to go to school past eighth grade. I grew up quite conservative. But quilts were always a part of our history. You can come up with the wildest designs on quilts.”
Miller and his wife, Sarah, moved to Sarasota from Ohio, where they had a farm. Now, they have a furniture store in Sarasota. In 1927, his great-great-grandfather became the first Amish bishop in Pinecraft, the Amish community on the outskirts of Sarasota.
For the past 100 years, Pinecraft, which is considered a liberal place in the Amish world, has been the hub of the Amish and Mennonite community in Sarasota.
All the different subgroups of Amish and Mennonite communities get along in Sarasota, Miller said — which they usually wouldn’t up north.
“For some reason here, people lay the offenses of the past down,” Miller said.