A Quilt Maker’s Tale – #7 – By Joanne Harris
My grandmother could pull any quilt from her closet (that’s where she kept them) and tell you something about it. One time she pulled one down for me and told me where each fabric had come from, some were clothing that her children had worn. She remembered every piece. Every quilt maker has a story to tell. I want to collect those stories and share them with you.
A Quilt Maker’s Tale is a series featuring stories from my readers about their experiences with quilts. The stories are in the quilt maker’s own words and uses their own pictures. If you’d like to be featured in this series, please have a look here.
See all the posts in this series here.
Our story today was sent in by Joanne Harris.
My tale is about how I got started as a quilter and how I have changed over the years. It all began just over 40 years ago. My husband had just finished his PhD, and we moved across the country so he could take a job in his field. I was pregnant at the time and had worked outside the home for the entire time we had been married.
That move isolated me in a number of ways. I did not have a job I was returning to and my circle of friends was 2000 miles away. I had a little girl but all
I was finding to talk about at the end of the day was baby stuff. I was boring even to myself.
When the local paper ran an ad for night classes my husband insisted that I sign up for a quilting class. The classes were once a week with a little homework in between classes. The class location was only 5 minutes from the house and he assured me he was more than capable of holding the fort for the hour and a half that I would be away from our daughter. He knew that something sewing would be a good fit because I had taught clothing construction classes and had a degree in Clothing, Textiles and Design.
I still have my 5 block poly/cotton sampler with the polyester batting, to remind myself that I have indeed come a long way.
Well as they say the rest is history. This was all before Eleanor Burn’s “Quilt in a Day” revolution, the rotary cutter and self-healing matt. I found my passion or so I thought. I am good with colours and can follow direction. Over the next few years I made some quilts and took some more advanced classes. Then it was back to work at a day job full time with very little “spare” time. Fast forward again to retirement.
We moved again and I boxed up my stash. This was a good thing because it allowed me to do some level of organization. And once again quilting saved me. I was in a new to me small town. The local quilters got wind of a new quilter in town and I was taken under their wings. I got started making charity or community outreach quilts using my scraps and the scraps our group was given. A whole new world was opened to me. I still do that but my latest quilting endeavor is pattern testing for those talented quilters who possess the designer gene that I lack.
My years as a Math teacher, all those tests and assignments to mark, provided me with some pretty good proofreading skills. My significant stash provided the materials and the Internet which didn’t exist when I started this voyage provided the means to connect.
I love colour, I love creating, I love the feeling you get when you make something out of “nothing” and I really love helping the next generation of quilters put their best foot forward.
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Thank you so much, Joanne for sharing your story with us.
A Quilt Maker’s Tale is a series featuring stories from my readers about their experiences with quilts. The stories are in the quilt maker’s own words and uses their own pictures. If you’d like to be featured in this series, please have a look here.
