PATCHING TOGETHER A COLLECTION: GLENDA CASTELLI HAS MORE THAN 100 QUILTS, WHICH SHE OFTEN DISPLAYS AT YEARLY FESTIVAL

In 1851, 11-year-old Ellen Gilby was stitching the letters of the alphabet to practice her embroidery on cloth that would become a "sampler" -- a small piece of cloth with designs or mottos.

More than 100 years later, Glenda Castelli, an avid quilt and sampler collector, would purchase Gilby's work at an antiques show in Reno, Nev.

It's the oldest sampler in her collection that she puts on display at quilt shows. It includes a Civil War-era red, white and blue quilt with an oak leaf pattern that she found in Iowa, where she was born.

"I've loved quilts all my life. I like the hand-made stuff that women made. They will be collectors' items," she said in the rural Windsor home where she lives with her husband, Steve.

The couple traveled across the country in the 1960s and 1970s when Steve was racing cars professionally. Along the way they collected stuff. Lots of stuff.

Castelli found the quilts of various sizes and samplers made by Amish women of particular interest, and she became friends with the women when she and Steve were in Lancaster County in south central Pennsylvania.

"We were there when they filmed 'Witness,'" she said. The 1985 movie starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGinnis is about a detective who is trying to protect an Amish boy who has witnessed a murder.

The Amish adhere to simple living and plain dress and eschew modern technology. But the Amish women were known to exchange local gossip during their quilting sessions, Castelli said.

The "hot" quilt in the 1970s was called "The Wedding Ring" with patterns of intersecting circles.

Castelli's collection of more than 100 quilts -- a fourth of them made by Amish women -- includes a "Double Wedding Ring" from the Great Depression era. Such quilts were given as wedding presents.

Another Amish quilt contains the names of family members on blue cloth.

A blue-and-white quilt from the 1930s includes the names of the states. A red, white and blue quilt from the 1920s employs a pinwheel pattern.

"I hardly bought any quilts in the western states. They were all made in the Midwest or further east," Castelli said.

Many of the quilts in Castelli's collection are cotton, but some are "crazy quilts" that combine several fabrics, including pieces of handed-down clothing, in no discernible pattern.

An Amish quilt that commemorates a barn raising in the late 1800s uses silk and a precursor to rayon fabric.

"The Amish liked quilts with blue, green, red and later lavender," Castelli said. "They were not allowed to have buttons on clothing. They used pins."

Castelli's collection of framed samplers, smaller quilts or embroidered cloth, range from the instructive to the whimsical:

"Retirement: Twice as much husband. Half as much money."

"Truth is beauty, Beauty is Truth."

"Friends are flowers in the Garden of Life."

Castelli, 72, the manager of the Windsor Farmers Market between 2001 and 2012, and Nicole Cowlin, the owner of the Material Girl fabric store in the Old Downtown Windsor, got the idea eight years ago for an annual quilt show on the first Sunday in July. Today, it's one of the largest quilt shows in Northern California.

Cowlin was looking for a way to raise money for her Relay for Life cancer fundraising team, "In Stitches with the Material Girls."

Castelli supplies 40 quilts from her collection each year to the show. Members of quilting guilds and clubs offer their finest work for sale.

Castelli's daughter Tina is now manager of the Farmers Market. "My daughter calls me an historian," she said.

That's because during their travels across the country, Glenda and Steve collected things for 50 years. "We saved everything that would have gone to the dumps or in someone else's collection," Castelli said.

Among them is Castelli's other passion -- anything about Elsie the Cow, who became the bovine face of the Borden Dairy Company around 1936, but really hit her stride in the 1950s.

"Her husband was Elmer, of Elmer's glue," Castelli said as she displayed a collection of sketches of Elsie's face dating back to 1936. A huge, antique Borden's Ice Cream neon sign adorns the kitchen area of the home west of Windsor that Steve built 33 years ago.

Not to be outdone by cows and quilts, Steve, 73, a San Francisco native, has for 40 years collected an impressive assortment of vintage toys -- a veritable North Pole South. It contains the largest collection of balloon tire bicycles in the world, Glenda says.

Steve also has antique tractors from the 1940s and 1950s, and 30 muscle cars.

"You could never replace this collection," Steve said.

The couple, who have two daughters and four grandchildren, just celebrated their 52nd anniversary.

They agree that even if they wanted to move, it would be impossible.