The Sunnyvale Sun

Cover Story

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Irish Artist: Philomena Durcan, the owner of Celtic Quilt Designs and author of four quilting design books, works on one of her designs.

Common Threads

Quilting creates a social fabric

By Joanne Griffith Dominique

When Helen Hodack retired from the corporate world five years ago, learning how to quilt was at the top of her list.

She had been collecting quilts for 25 years wanted to make her own.

Hodack began by taking a class at Whiffle Tree Quilts, a Cupertino shop, and she's been there ever since. About six months ago she became an equal partner with Louise Horkey, who has owned the shop since 1992.

Hodack, 50, said she's stayed at Whiffle Tree because, "It's a community, not just a store. ... Women are seeking balance in their lives. Our clients include doctors and lawyers. Quilting is a way to put the work behind them, to shift gears."

More women seem to be doing exactly that. The total number of quilters in the United States today exceeds 27 million, almost a 100 percent increase since 1997, according to "Quilting in America," a survey conducted by Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. Quilting is now a $3.3 billion industry--an increase of 34.6 percent since 2003.

Experts believe an industrial revolution in quilting tools may account for this recent surge in quilting. A huge upswing in the popularity of machine quilting has made it easier for people to make quilts faster and see the fruits of their labor sooner, wrote Bob Ruggiero, director of publications and public information for Quilts Inc., in an email.

There is now software for designing quilts, with computer designs to download from computer to sewing machine. There are rotary cutting tools that are faster and sharper than scissors. "This was not the case five years ago, and pretty much non-existent 10 years ago," Ruggiero said.

When Horkey, 48, began quilting 27 years ago, she made her quilt patterns using the cardboard from cereal boxes and plastic lids, and she cut all the fabric pieces with a pair of scissors.

Today she uses a rotary cutter, which looks like a pizza cutter and is more accurate than scissors. She uses computer software, EQ5, Electric Quilt version 5, to design her quilts. And she downloads the pattern directly to her sewing machine.

Paula Ivers, a 44-year Sunnyvale native and owner of The Granary, a Sunnyvale quilt shop, agrees the new tools have made it easier than ever for people to quilt. The changes have enhanced the hobby, she said. "People are not sitting there at night cutting and fitting little pieces together."

Mary Kay Davis, 46, who works at The Granary, makes a lot of samples for the store and she has to do them quickly. The new tools make that possible. She uses one of the new computerized sewing machines that are so advanced, "some cost as much as my first car.''

"Making samples is how we sell our fabric,'' Ivers said, and Davis is fast. "She's unreal. We'll have an idea, and two days later Mary Kay walks in with a completed quilt."

Ivers enjoys the handwork. "I just can't crank out the quilts as fast."

Products and classes are pitched to the busy quilter. There are patterns called "Lazy Girl Designs." Both Whiffle Tree and The Granary offer classes. At the Granary, speed is emphasized: classes on quick gifts for the holidays; classes called lunchtime quickie on the first and third Fridays at noon. A description of the class for an X-Bag purse calls construction "quick and simple."

Ivers said you don't need a fancy machine for quilting, just a machine that can sew a clean-inch seam allowance. But machine quilting is mostly what is done in this area now, as many people don't have the time for handwork.

But some do. Just ask Paula Larkin Hutton, a Cupertino quilter.

"I enjoy handwork. It's a Zen-like thing," she said. She admits that instead of making one quilt a year, by hand, people can do one quilt a month by machine. But she likes doing it by hand.

Larkin Hutton, 54, made her first quilt in college in 1974, before quilting revived big time in 1976, spurred by interest in the nation's Bicentennial. "There are a whole lot of red, white and blue quilts sitting around in attics," she said.

Hutton took a year off from college in 1974. She got a job, lived with her parents, and grew really bored. She loved quilts, so she decided to make one. It took her a year. It was red and yellow, "pretty eye-popping." She taught herself from a book. Technically her quilt was not very good, she said. But she took it back to college, and her friends thought it was great. "Nobody else had seen a handmade quilt."

It was years before she made another quilt. She was married with kids and bored again, she said. This time she took a class. She went on making quilts at about one per year. She began thinking that piecing by machine was respectable, and now she pieces her quilts that way. But she does her own hand quilting. "I don't like machine quilting," she said.

Eventually, she decided she didn't want to be just a quilt person. She no longer makes a quilt for every life event. Now she makes a quilt when one of her six children marries. And she has a quilt on her own bed.

While her children were growing up, Larkin Hutton had to learn a technique called sewing around children so she wouldn't poke a child.

"I'm really a craftswoman. And I'm proud of being a craftswoman. I love feeling in touch with all the women who came before me and made beautiful and useful things," she said.

Philomena Durcan, a Sunnyvale resident, is a well-known craftswoman. Durcan, who is Irish, published her first book, Celtic Quilt Designs, in 1980. She had submitted a block--a design--to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association in 1978. "We loved Philomena's design," they said.

Durcan was thrilled with the review. "We started a business over that one line," she said. Her designs were unique. Using the Book of Kells, the illustrated eighth-century Gospel manuscript found in Kells, Ireland, as her inspiration, she designed blocks of interlace, graceful, symmetrical swirling images. She appliquéd the designs, using bias strips, onto blocks and then hand-quilted the entire quilt using the same images featured in the blocks.

The result was breathtaking. Durcan took her quilt and her books to the national quilt show and market that same year in Houston. People attended the show from all over the world. Durcan's quilt was a show-stopper. People had never seen anything like it. "People were spellbound," she said.

She had 10,000 copies printed of her first book, and they sold out after the show. She was inundated with orders. Her business took off from there. She talks and teaches all over the world. She has spoken in every state in the United States, except Hawaii. She was in Japan last March.

Duncan has published three more books of her original quilt designs, her most recent in 2003. She runs a successful business online, selling her books, her original quilting tools and techniques.

"It is great doing something you love and people acknowledging it," Durcan, 72, said. She still does all her work by hand. At the end of the day she may be tired, "but you sit and sew and the energy returns."

Durcan belongs to a local quilting group. It used to be a group of 12 women, called Studio 12. Today there are three members. They call themselves the Remnants.

"The fellowship is wonderful. We learn from each other. We go with our own thing--patchwork, appliqué--it's all hand- done. The quilting is all hand-done. We're a dying breed." She values "that nurturing you get when you work on your own piece."

Isabelle Long, a Sunnyvale resident and member of the Remnants, also quilts by hand. "Some do fabulous work by machine," she said. "But I'd rather preserve the handwork."

Long's home is filled with quilts, many hanging as works of art on her walls. Recently she made a 50-inch-square bow-tie quilt for her son's 50th birthday. Long's father died in 2000. She was an only child and is sentimental. So she used her father's ties for her son's quilt.

"It was quite a challenge," she said. "Some were silk, some wool. I had to make each equal in weight, so I had to back the silk ties."

She has her Christmas quilt on her bed now. It comes out once a year. She, too, treasures the friendships of her quilting group and the help each has offered the others. She especially felt their support when her son John died in a motorcycle accident 19 years ago. He was 28.

"All of the gals in Studio 12 were very supportive, mostly by listening to my fond remembrances of him and talking my way through grief. I was very thankful to have them as my support group although I do not think they thought of themselves in that role. ... I was saddened to think that I missed the opportunity to make a quilt for him."

The tools and techniques for quilting may have changed, but the nurturing and connecting, woman to woman, has remained the same. Quilting is a place friendships are made as well as quilts. Women come together to take a class or join a quilting group and come away with much more than a quilt.

"It's a very therapeutic hobby," Ivers said. It's rewarding for her to see the relationships that form in her shop.

"Women meet in class and leave as friends. It's a great place for women to be. They get a lot of support. The whole atmosphere is nurturing,'' said Ivers. "People say, 'It's so much cheaper than going to a therapist.'"

For more information about quilting, contact The Granary, 1326 S. Mary Ave., Sunnyvale at 408.735.9830 or www.thegranaryquilts.com. Whiffle Tree Quilts, 10261 S. DeAnza Blvd., Cupertino can be reached at 408.255.5270 or www.whiffletreequilts.com.