Living Treasure: Sara Hill

Sara Hill  Photo: Urban News

By Marnie Walsh

Sara Hill was born July 7, 1934 in Fayetteville, to Thomas English Hill and Sara Prather Armfield Hill. Her family moved throughout the South during her childhood in conjunction with her father’s Presbyterian ministry, which also provided them a link to Montreat, NC. The family spent many summer vacations at the church-owned mountain retreat, and her family later purchased a home among other relatives there.

On returning to the mountains, Sara took a part-time position as a social worker and family therapist at Trend Mental Health Center in Hendersonville, but after a few years her passion for quilting led to a new profession—teaching.

She began teaching quilting at Asheville-Buncombe Community College (A-B Tech) in 1996; in 2006, A-B Tech President K. Ray Bailey honored Sara by making her the College Forum’s first Continuing Education Instructor of the Year. In addition to teaching at Marti’s Quilt Shop in Black Mountain, since 1998 she has set up “Learn, Sew, and Give” groups that use donated fabric to make quilts for the community and organizations.

She also teaches at UNCA’s Super Saturday Program, Girl Scouts, and some elementary schools and has served on the Board of the Boys and Girls Clubs. Sara is a member of local, regional, state, and national quilt associations serving twice as president of the Asheville Quilt Guild, and receiving its Dorothy Tresner Award for long-term commitment and devotion to the art of quilting.

She has worked with the NC Quilt Symposium, judged quilts at the Western North Carolina State Fair and other shows, and hosts Quilting Bees at Lake Tomahawk, where participants are encouraged to donate quilts to the community. She has demonstrated quilting at the barns of the Biltmore House in Asheville.