Quilting in the News

Some interesting news articles about quilters and quilting.

First, from The Daily Advance, is the story of 100 year old Emily Harrell of Elizabeth City, NJ. Emily has been quilting since the age of 8 – 92 years! She quilts for five to six hours per day and is preparing for her own quilt exhibit in this year’s quilt show by the Colonial Quilt Lovers Guild scheduled April 18—19 at Knobbs Creek Recreational Center.

Will you still be quilting when you’re 100 years old?

The next story, from RoadsideAmerica.com doesn’t have quite the happy ending as the first. It’s the story of “The World’s Largest Historical Quilt” - the quilt was stitched together in 1988 by Leona Tennyson, along with volunteers from 53 North Dakota counties who helped stitch the quilt. as a private project to celebrate North Dakota's 100th anniversary of statehood. According to the article, “The quilt covers 11,390 square feet (85 ft. by 134 ft), a faithful reproduction of the state of North Dakota with every county a different color. Volunteers from 53 North Dakota counties helped stitch the quilt.”

Any quilter knows what an enormous undertaking designing, creating, and sewing this quilt together must have been. And quilters living in or visiting North Dakota would put it on their “things to see” list! So where can you see this quilt on exhibit?

You can’t. According to the article, “The randomly-folded, tightly-packed mass fills Leona's extended Econoline van to the roof -- a shapeless, tussocky 800 lb. blob resembling a giant wad of used gum.” North Dakota’s government not only has no interest in exhibiting the quilt, but they also forbade Leona from taking her quilt across the border to South Dakota, who offered to provide exhibit space for the quilt!

Read the entire article from RoadsideAmerica.com here.

And women aren’t the only quilters in the news these days. The Minneapolis-St.Paul TV Station KARE 11 recently did a story on 91 year old Ed Schmidt, who made 125 quilts last year, and 145 quilts the year before!

According to the article, “At some point Ed's family began running out of shelf space. That's when Ed started adopting the whole town. The quilts that the babies play on, and the children sleep under at Little Lambs Child Care were given to them by Ed.His quilts ride with the fire department, the police department, and the Waseca County Sheriff's deputies.Kids get many of them, at some tough times."They wrap right up in it and just love it," Sheriff Tim Dann says as he holds up one of Ed's donated quilts.Children in Waseca have something in common with kids at four South Dakota Indian reservations who now wrap themselves in Ed's quilts too. ‘I get a pretty good feeling up here, from that,’ says Ed holding his hand to his heart. ‘That's I guess why I keep on doing it.’”

And then there’s the current uproar (?) / controversy over the latest edition of Mark Lipinski’s Quilter’s Home magazine, which contains an article titled on the cover as “Shocking Quilts: We Show You The Controversial Patchwork”. According to the Denver Post article, Lipinski knew the article might be “perceived as scandalous” and went to the trouble (and expense) of having the magazines wrapped in plastic prior to shipping. “Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts, the sewing and scrapbooking mega-chain, opted not to carry the sordid edition — a little ‘too hot’ for Jo-Ann is what Lipinski says his distributor told him,” states the Post article. According to Mark’s blog, the issue is sold out and is, therefore, now considered a collector’s item. You can scoop one up on Ebay for $14.99 (plus $5.00 shipping!) and see what the controversy is all about.