Turtle Creek Sewing Circle still going strong at 100

Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on September 26, 2026

Members of the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle at their November 2025 Meeting, Photo by Daniel Prislovsky.

We take a lot for granted these days. A trip into H-E-B for a few supplies is fairly simple, even when you live on a ranch in a remote area of Kerr County. You just jump in your truck and go to town.

In 1926, even if you were lucky enough to own an automobile, a five-mile trip from a ranch into town was a major production. A 1926 Ford Model T had a top speed of 35 miles an hour and most of the roads — even streets in town — weren’t paved. 

Imagine living on a ranch where your nearest neighbor was several miles away and your entire social life seemed to exist under the roof of your own home — communications from the outside world came mostly by letter, and telephones were expensive and uncommon in most country households. 

A hundred years ago, to combat the lonely, isolated lifestyle of Central Texas ranch life, a group of 14 women in the Turtle Creek Community, 7 miles south of Kerrville, decided to form a social club and began to meet regularly.  From the minutes of their first meeting, the purpose of forming this club was stated as “to form a social get-together from which we hope to establish a greater feeling of goodwill toward each other.”

In the beginning, the group met every other Thursday, either in the home of a member or at the Turtle Creek Schoolhouse. The women met mostly to have time to be social with the neighbors — to chat and have a “kaffe klatch” — but many women also brought sewing projects and mending to work on while they met, so they chose to name themselves the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle.

Elizabeth Spicer Mosty (1887-1951) and and Adelia Gibbens Barton (1878-1972)
Two of the 14 charter members of the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle.
I wish I had found more photos of the original members.

The women who formed the club were from many of the oldest ranching families in the county — names like Real, Spicer, Strohacker and Barton can be found in the list of charter members.

The group membership grew in the first year to 26 members, each paying 10 cents a year in dues. As the group grew, the meetings were changed to monthly meetings, which consisted of a business meeting, fellowship and a potluck meal where food was shared and recipes were often exchanged.

The official minutes and scrapbooks that the club has kept for the past 100 years tell more than a story of a group of friends gathering around beautifully decorated tables loaded with food. They are a wonderful record of Turtle Creek history. Children who grew up accompanying their mothers to the meetings, eventually became members themselves. Births, accomplishments, vacations, weddings, funerals and other major events were all recorded in the minutes. The attendees at the annual picnic each year read like a Kerr County Who’s Who.

The minutes also kept record of the projects the club participated in during World War II. In September 1942, the club joined with the local Red Cross to help in the war effort. They teamed up with churches and other Kerr County organizations to sew 300 garments. That year, they also canceled their annual picnic and dance in favor of sending the money normally spent on the event to the United Service Organization. In May of 1943, the members voted to make a quilt for the Red Cross, and donations were sent to fill an overseas kit for servicemen.

As the years passed, there were fewer accounts of the members actually sewing, but they kept the group’s original name. As a matter of fact, the last time the club sewed together was in 2012, when the members made a commemorative quilt for history’s sake. The quilt is embroidered with squares of butterflies and flowers that recorded each name of the members that year.

Today, membership is limited to 33 members (a number selected early in the group’s history because a group larger than that would be too big to fit into a member’s home for a meeting) and there’s a waiting list of women who want to join. According to member and former president Pennie Prislovsky, the club is thriving, meets once a month and, while there isn’t any sewing going on, the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle still follows same bylaws and traditions it observed in 1926.   

Sew Tasty! The Turtle Creek Sewing Circle's
cookbook celebrating the club's 100th birthday.

To celebrate the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle’s 100th anniversary, they published a cookbook featuring recipes from its membership — from 1926 to today. The early recipes, like a whole roast pig and buttermilk pie, can be found next to casserole and gelatin salads from the ’60s and ’70s. There are also some more familiar modern recipes from the current membership.

As someone who geeks out on a good cookbook, I can tell you this is a wonderful collection of recipes.

The cookbook also features a nicely written history of the Turtle Creek Sewing Circle, along with a list of circle presidents and charter members. Interesting highlights from the group’s collection of minutes can also be found among the recipes, for example “The club voted in 1928 to elect officers each November. In 1958, with no volunteers nominated, Meta Real Alderdice was quickly elected secretary, as she was coming up the driveway late for the meeting.”

I will finish with a quote from the circle’s history in the cookbook: “The wonderful thing about this Sewing Circle is that while we may have stopped sewing with needle and thread, our faithfulness in regular gatherings demonstrates a focus on a different kind of sewing, one that knits together lives and stitches lasting bonds of friendship.”

If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of “Sew Tasty,” the circle’s cookbook, copies can be found at the Heart of the Hills Heritage Center gift shop.