A stitch in time

Las Vegas history captured in fabric

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You won't find this quilt tossed across any child's bed. It's too special.

It uses photos to commemorate Las Vegas' Centennial and is covered with nearly 100 shots.

There's the Dunes' mighty sultan, his arms akimbo as he surveys the Strip.

There's the Eldorado Club lit up on Fremont Street.

There's the Helldorado parade in all its glory and Vegas Vicki when she reigned over downtown.

The quilt's official title is A Journey Through Time because it follows the history of Las Vegas.

Not all the photos are self-explanatory so the quilt has an accompanying booklet that sums up identifying information as is known.

"My favorite shot is one of some Las Vegas children seeing snow for the first time," said Mimi Shimp, creator of the quilt whose in-home business is called A Stitch in Time. "Most of the children are dressed in dark clothing but there's this one little girl wearing white in the front. She's looking up at the sky and she has her arms out like she's trying to catch the flakes."

That photo was from Jan. 10, 1930, and the snowflake girl is identified in the booklet as Kathleen Meyers.

There's another shot showing the city's first baseball team and one of the first mayor, Pete Buol.

But you won't find Elvis or the Rat Pack.

There was too much red tape involved to get permission from their estates for their likenesses to be used.

"The most difficult part of this project was getting the photos," Shimp said. "I figured people would be willing to share but that's not necessarily what we found."

No matter. The 76-inch by 91-inch quilt is a veritable treasure trove of history. Where else can you see the first airmail being hand delivered ... to a cowboy on horseback? And what about the shot showing the first buildings on Fremont Street, that's a classic when you consider what that land must be worth today.

"In 1905 and the decades soon after, the city grew as rapidly as it does now, within the context of that period," Shimp said. "You see how, in 1905, Vegas was just raw land being auctioned off and three years later, there are all these houses."

Soon after being commissioned by the Las Vegas Centennial Committee to come up with a concept and make a quilt, Shimp presented them with three designs. The one that used photos won hands down.

The pictures were donated by UNLV, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority News Bureau and from the personal collections of several local residents and photographers. Piles of photos were scoured and choices narrowed down by Shimp and Centennial Committee members.

Some were deemed unusable due to years of wear and tear. Others ended up too small after being scanned.

Before they made the final cut, the quality needed to be addressed. That was accomplished with modern technology.

Shimp's husband, John, helped by scanning the photos and "fixing" them with Adobe Photoshop software. Skies needed to be made bluer. Cracks needed to be removed with an airbrushing tool. Fixing the pictures proved the most time consuming part of the project.

The quilt took nearly 400 hours of work to create, twice what Shimp originally estimated.

It cost $2,000 just in materials, $300 of that for the special fabric sheets that could run through a regular printer.

A friend of Shimp's, Ronda Beyer, was hired to finish the quilt by attaching it to batting and backing.

Laurie Erickson, co-owner of Centennial Quilt Shop, 7950 W. Tropical Parkway, Suite 130, displayed the Centennial quilt in her store for a few days in August while finishing touches like Swarovski crystals were being added.

"When I first saw it, I thought it was awful bright and colorful," Erickson said. "It suited Las Vegas, how exciting the city is. I was just surprised there wasn't anything on the mob. But then, I can understand them not wanting to celebrate that kind of thing."

But one photo from 1905 showed some people had a sense of humor.

"There's this shot of the land auction and the corner of it was very dark," Simp said. "We weren't sure we could use it. We had to lighten it, then lighten it some more. And finally I looked at the corner and saw these two men, bending over a table, showing their butts ... They were mooning the photographer. I was sitting at my computer just laughing."

Beyer's stitching, Shimp said, runs right through the men's posteriors.

No doubt this bit of trivia will invigorate residents to hurry downtown where the quilt is on display this month at the Clark County Government Center Rotunda. In October, it is slated to be moved to the Grant Sawyer Building.

It will have a permanent home at the Clark County Museum starting in December.