Quilting

My love of quilting started in high school. How could I have known that a transfer student from Colorado would change my life forever? He was tall, cute, soft spoken and I was instantly ‘in crush’. I worshiped him and I honestly can’t remember how I found out that his mother was an expert quilter - a great reason to spend countless hours at his house.

I should probably back up to say that my mother first handed me a needle and thread when I was 3 so that I could make doll clothes while she made clothes for me and my sisters. My grandmother then taught me how to embroider. I started making clothes when I was in third grade. For me, quilting seemed like the next logical step.

I spent countless hours at my crush’s house. His mother patiently showed me how to piece, how to attach the batting and backing and how to quilt it all together. I can still remember her moving all of the furniture out of her dining room so we could tape the quilt to the floor to baste it. She also told me where to find antique quilt kits at a local store and set me on the path to a lifelong passion. (The crush did not end up being a lifelong passion -- he went back West after high school and then settled in Texas. I went to school out East and ended up in Chicago. We were never destined to be together, but I’ll always have a special place in my heart for his mother.)

I love that when you quilt, you take an otherwise useless scrap of fabric and transform it into a work of art. It is also a great way to express how much you care for someone – the Robbing Peter to Pay Paul quilt that went to the person who lent us money to open a restaurant and then forgave that loan; the Drunkard’s Path for my ex-husband ;-); the Lemoyne Star and Variation on a Lemoyne Star for my nieces with pieces of my older niece’s quilt fabric scattered into her younger sister’s quilt. Finally, Petey, the Pandemic Peacock – my first appliqué quilt that is now on my boyfriend’s bed.

There were other quilts in between, a pre-printed whole cloth quilt that got me through mono when I was 30. The Grandmother’s Flower Garden that includes pieces of my grandmother’s petticoats in the background. The Tumbling Block quilt that I framed and hung over my bed. The pink and green quilt that somehow ended up way too long and became a quilt with matching pillow shams. The purple Broken Star that taught me about how to have straight lines and 90° angles on a quilt made mostly with diamond shaped pieces.

I started entering quilting competitions after my divorce. My first quilt entry was called a Double Ex quilt, name both for the pattern and the time in my life. It’s a quilt I saw in a Metropolitan Museum quilt book. I remade it but fixed some of the uneven borders in my version (Have I mentioned that quilting is well-suited to my perfectionistic OCD tendencies?). It was accepted into a juried show in Wisconsin. My second quilt that was accepted into that show was called “Ode to Roy”. It’s based on a Roy Lichtenstein painting I saw at a museum in Connecticut. It won 3rd place for hand piecing and quilting. I’ve entered Petey into the most recent show, but it’s been delayed until 2022 because of the pandemic.

I’m now working on a 1250+ piece chain quilt using leftover mask fabric. It’s my first burgundy-toned quilt and, as with most of my quilts, it’s teaching me something new. I wanted a completely ‘random’ pattern for the pieces, so I ended up taping fabric to my basement floor and then laying out and pinning the entire quilt to make sure there was good color distribution. I’ve just started sewing them together.

People often ask me why I don’t use a machine for the quilts. Wouldn’t it be faster? Probably but it wouldn’t be the same. I quilt while I watch TV. The clunk, clunk, clunk of a machine would drive me nuts and at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter how long it takes me to make a quilt (or how long it takes for my fingertips to heal after multiple needle jabs). It’s the journey. It’s the thrill of figuring out how to make a pattern work, of finding just the right fabrics, the feel of the scissors in your hand as you get everything ready to sew and, ultimately, of curling up under it for a good night’s sleep.