“She who dies with the most fabric wins” is a bumper sticker only a certain element of society can appreciate. With her twinkling eyes and girlish laugh, Dorothy McGuire does see the humor and truth in this slogan as she has been quilting for nearly 50 years and has the treasury of scraps to prove it.

Now 90, though her smooth complexion and agile frame belie her years, McGuire has been quilting since the late 1950s. A photo of a Dresden Plate quilt on a magazine cover inspired her to make one square, which she then fashioned into a pillow. “I was just captured by it,” she recalls. “I am so very, very fortunate that I still have the eyesight to keep on sewing.”

McGuire has lost count of how many quilts she has made, but says her three children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren have all been beneficiaries. “I made them for everyone in the family till there was no one left to give one to,” McGuire says with a laugh. The tables were turned on her in June when fellow members of the Milltown Quilters presented the Vantage House resident with 63 individual squares as a surprise for her birthday.