Stitching up a storm
October 2, 2008
By Laura Geggel
Club helps women find their own styles
Mary Maupin holds up a bat she sewed at the Sno-Valley Quilters Club. Photo by Laura Geggel
Quilting can be methodical and creative. The seamstress may have to attend quilt shows and leaf through magazines before a design inspires her. Selecting the right shade of cloth before measuring twice and cutting once leads to the most labor-intensive part — sewing sometimes hundreds of pieces together to perfect a pattern.Miles of thread aside, the Sno-Valley Quilters are up to the task.
The group meets twice a month in the Mt. Si Senior Center multipurpose room. Three Valley quilters — Karen Snyder, Pat Palmer and Tina Bilderbach — started the group in June.
“It’s a real comfortable place to come,” Palmer said. “You come in and set up the table and bring all of your stuff in. When it’s time to leave, you clean up.”
The e-mail list includes about 65 women in their twenties to eighties. Most of them pop in whenever they can for a few hours. Once a month, one of the more experienced members leads a workshop.
“The idea was to provide working mothers a place to come when they got off work,” Snyder said. “People overlap and get to meet each other.”
Joanne Landdeck, a resident of North Bend, said she sewed “a little bit growing up” and enjoyed the Quilting Club’s camaraderie.
“I can do it at home, but there are other distractions,” Landdeck said. Her current project, a quilt with dozens of pink and red hearts of varying sizes, will be a gift for her daughter.
Mary Kelly of Issaquah said she liked meeting other women who shared her interest of sewing.
“You can muddle through on your own, but it’s fun to come here and be social,” said Kelly, who moved from Chicago a year ago.
The quilters range from women who have never threaded a sewing machine to people who could do so with their eyes closed.
Marian Adcox of Snoqualmie has pieced together patterns for 20 years. Even her sewing machine, a 1949 Singer Featherweight, is older than the average appliance. She said quilting helped her relax. The first time she made a double wedding ring quilt — a design with interlocking circles — her mother was in the hospital and she had just been laid off from her computer-programming job.
“I pushed all of the pieces through and let it all go away,” Adcox said.
She later got a job at Pacific Fabrics Crafts in Issaquah before it closed at the end of May.
Adcox’s current project has 275 pieces and will be handed off to her daughter once she has finished the top layer and attached the fluffy batting in the middle to the backside.
Many of the quilters said they intend to give away their quilts to friends and family.
Mary Maupin, sewing holiday-themed decorations for her four children, has assigned each child a holiday. The Halloween grab bag contained a large bat and a quilt, among other Oct. 31 memorabilia.
Palmer said she planned to give quilts to each of her five grandchildren for Christmas.
But not everyone is giving away quilts.
“I do it for me, so it’s not like a time crunch,” Kelly said.
To raise funds, the group is holding a quilt drawing to benefit Mt. Si Senior Center.
Sewers plan to hold a drawing for Carnation’s Camp Korey, a Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with serious or life-threatening maladies. They are also sewing for Project Linus, a nationwide organization providing covers for children who are ill, traumatized or in need of a blanket or quilt.
When they’re not busy sewing, the group is busy buying fabric and surveying other quilts. They recently rented a bus to see a show in Leavenworth.
“You go to quilt shows and get ideas,” Kelly said.
Meetings will be held from 1:30-10 p.m. Oct. 14 and Dec. 9. Other meetings will be held from 12-10 p.m. Oct. 23, Nov. 10, Nov 13 and Dec. 11.
To learn more, e-mail Karen Snyder at ksnyderandgary@comcast.net.
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