This is the 25th anniversary of the Mississippi Quilt Association, and this week, it held a winter gathering at Oxford’s Powerhouse.

Virginia native Ann O’Dell, of the Piecemakers Quilt Guild of Oxford, said the meeting this weekend coincided with a quilting exhibit at a local museum.

O’Dell said she believes quilt-making is important, and it will continue to live on because creativity is important and satisfying.

“The only limits to quilting are a person’s imagination,” she said. “Part of our program this morning was the presentation of art quilts. People are doing landscape quilts, and imitating abstract artists in their quilts. There are just no limits at all.”

O’Dell said many people quilt because it’s relaxing.

“It really is a meditation,” she said.

The group has several new young members who have joined and want to learn to quilt, O’Dell said.

“I think people are seeing their grandmother’s quilts and great-grandmother’s quilts,” she said, “and I think something deep inside them realizes that they need something to relax and soothe.”

Lafayette County native Ruth Ann Locke, 73, has dabbled in quilting a decade and says it’s an important craft.

“My mother is the one who made quilts, and she got me interested in it,” she said.

“It’s a way to be creative. It’s relaxing when things work right, the piecing process. People quilt today for different reasons than they did two or three generations ago. Working on a quilt, it reminds me of my mother and my grandparents. It’s kind of like reminiscing.”