QUILT HISTORY STORIES
ELGIN, ILLINOIS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
LeeWard Mills and Lee Wards Story
Book 7
Susan Wildemuth, Atkinson, IL
History of LeeWard Mills and LeeWards
General Mills Years (1969 –1985)
Meet LeeWards Designers
LeeWards did utilize outside manufacturers for some of the products in their line, but they also manufactured their own kits. A typical LeeWards kit contained all the components you needed in one package to complete a project such as a Christmas ornament, quilt, needlepoint, crewel, a piece of stamped goods, or myriad other items. Designs for the kits sometimes came from employees working in all areas of the company, but many of them came directly from LeeWards own in-house designers.
An April 15, 1971 Courier News article shares information about an Open House on Sunday afternoon from 1 to 5 to celebrate the Grand Opening of the new LeeWards, 1200 St. Charles Street, Elgin, Illinois plant. This newspaper clipping is the first evidence, other than oral histories, that LeeWards had in-house designers. The article reads, “There will be craft demonstrations by professional Demonstrators and LeeWards’ own designers. Lowry Holt, Byr Setsman, and Alicia Prusa will be there to show how they create original designs for the LeeWards exciting line.”(61)
Permission was Granted in Writing to Use This Image
In the LeeWards Spring and Summer 1974 Catalog 76, the company did a wonderful thing; they introduced six of their in-house designers in an article entitled “Six LeeWards Designers Discuss Their Favorites!” Their names were Byr Setsman, Vera, Schultz, Lowry Hall, Louise Graf, Kathy York, and Chris Gunnoe. (62) Alicia Prusa was not mentioned in Catalog 76, but the author feels she needs to be added to the list of designers to make it complete. It should also be noted that there might have been more in-house designers over the years, but at the time of this writing no documentation could be found for them.
Byr Setsman
LeeWards Head Designer
Award Winning Needle Artist
Authors Collection of Photos
“Embroidery is painting with a needle.” Byr Setsman 1974. (63)
There is no information about the exact date designer and needle artist Byr Setsman came to work for LeeWards, but it was during the Fink and Fried years. An Elgin, Illinois Business Directory reveals the Chicago, Illinois native was living in Elgin and working for LeeWards in 1967, but fellow employees who worked with her in the firm remember her being with the company as early as 1964. (64)
Byr Setsman was born August 20, 1912 in Illinois. (65) Her early years and education are a bit of a mystery, but information gleaned from the 1930 Census shares that Byr’s mother Jennie was a native of Holland who spoke German and became a United States citizen in 1892. At the time that census was taken, Mrs. Setsman was the owner of a school supplies store. She and her seventeen year old daughter Byr lived with Jennie’s sister and brother-in-law, a life insurance agent, Donna and James McKay in Chicago, Illinois. (66) An April 24, 1972 Daily Courier News article shares, “Miss Setsman had been embroidering since she was a little girl and by the age of 23 (1935) had her own needle art design studio in Chicago. (67) In 1954, Byr received a national award for her design used on the cover of a children’s book, but the name of the book was not included in the Daily Courier News article. (68)
Byr went to work for Fink and Fried at LeeWards sometime in the early 1960s and became Head Designer between the years 1964-1974 and stayed with the company when General Mills, Inc. took over the business in 1969.
Her forte was “soft crafts” or needlework and her specialty was embroidery and crewel work. Her designs sold extremely well.
Authors Collection
“One of her crewel designs, ‘Queen Anne’s Lace,’ was applied to a number of products such as large pictures, ovals, and pillows and became one of the top selling items at LeeWards in the early 1970s,” shares author and fellow artist Alicia (Prusa) Moorehead who was a colleague of Byr’s and Chief Demonstrator and Instructor for LeeWards in the early 1970s. (69) Lee Anderson adds, “Byr’s crewel piece sold over 80,000 pieces and was probably the most popular single item we had.” (70)
Byr was responsible for myriad other designs which became creative stitchery kits, quilts, tablecloths, pillow cases, afghans, Christmas tree skirts and fabric ornaments part of the LeeWards line. (71) Ms. Moorehead adds, “Byr was a lovely woman who was totally absorbed in needlework design.” Miss Setsman was devoted to her needle art and even invented a stitch called Byr’s Latch Hook. With her new stitch, crafters could use an ordinary embroidery needle instead of a crochet hook to make a latch hook. (72) According to an April 24, 1972 article found in the Daily Courier News one of her embroidery designs, “Pinnacles in Aquarius,” won a national award from the Embroiders Guild of America. Her prize winning picture included Florentine, mosaic, stem-stitch variation and half-cross stitches. (73)
Bry Setsman passed away unexpectedly at the age of 62 from a pulmonary embolism on Saturday October 19, 1974. (74) It came as quite a shock to everyone who knew her because she had not been sick. Her very brief obituary shared two things “she had been Head Designer at LeeWards for the past 10 years” and “surviving are all who shared the love of her art.” She was remembered by friends and co-workers at a memorial service LeeWards held for her. She had never married and was survived by her cousin Elizabeth of Barrington, Indiana. (75)
Lowry Holt - Creative Soul
Authors Collection of Photos
Lowry Holt
Lowry Holt, the gentleman among the ladies, was the “hard” crafts designer. (76) Alicia shares, “Lowry’s work included anything that was not needlework such as resin, safety pin jewelry, stain glass, sequins, candlemaking, lampmaking, flowers and much more. He was also the ‘Christmas’ designer and designed our extremely popular Sequin Ball kits.” (77) Lowry Holt and then Alicia Prusa did a local radio show about crafts and needlework in which people called in and asked them questions. (78) Mr. Holt liked doing TV craft shows and in his own words loved “intricate motifs and fine detailing” in the craft he created. (79)
Special Note:
Author would love to have photos/scans of the following LeeWard Designers to add to this story:
Vera Schultz
Vera Schultz was a “soft” crafts designer who enjoyed “the ‘new-old’ look of now heirlooms.” (80) Her area of expertise was knitting, crochet, and rugmaking. Alicia (Prusa) Moorehead shares, “I think Vera also made many of those initial samples that then went out to the sample makers after a design was approved.”(81)
Louise Graf
Designer Louise Graf believed that “nothing is more important than the joy of creation.” A twenty year employee of Leewards, her forte was “fabric” and one of her favorite designs was a vase of gingham posies (82) Mrs. Graf was born October 27, 1916 in Fort Scott, Kansas, the daughter of George and Elizabeth Greiner Sinn. She married Edward Graf and had been a resident of Elgin, Illinois since 1935. She passed away on September 3, 2003 and was buried at Bluff City Cemetery in Elgin, Illinois. (83)
Kathy York
Kathy York’s forte was “clipping and shaping sculpture in yarn.” (84) Her favorite designs were “punchwork pictures and the new ball fringe art kits.”(85)
Chris Gunnoe
Chris Gunnoe’s talent was working with dried flowers and the “ecology” art of the 1960s and 70s, which utilized things you would find in nature such as seeds and dried flowers organized in a shadowbox arrangement. (86)
Alicia Prusa
LeeWards Chief Demonstrator-Instructor
Designer
Authors Collection of Photos
Alicia Prusa (Moorehead) studied textile arts in junior college. Then drawing, textiles, and fashion design at the Art Institute of Chicago and by her early twenties had already begun her journey into the creative craft field. She left her position at Marshall Fields to join the staff of LeeWards in the early 1970s and became Chief Demonstrator-Instructor for LeeWards and traveled throughout the country developing and teaching new craft techniques. (87) Alicia was an employee of LeeWards from 1970 to about 1976/77 when she left the company for a position in Australia. Ms. Moorehead would return to the United States, author two craft books, and continue to work in the creative craft field until her retirement from the industry. (88)
Once designs were approved, they moved on to another building where the samples were turned into the kits. This “manufacturing” area was initially located in a separate tin building attached to the side of the large brick building at 840 N. State Street in Elgin. That was the place they did embroidered goods, crewel, needlepoint, screen printing, and stamping. Reports vary, but there were anywhere from 50 to 70 sewing machines in that area with long-time employee Doug Combs supervising the warehouse part of the operation. (89)
