They stick to me like lint.
In the back of my mind, I'm always collecting bits and images to use in a quilt. Often it's a simple thing, like the perfect gold streak in a salmon sky. Or the joy of a small school with kids playing in the yard.
Then, one day, these bits begin to join hands.
Hello, I'm Mary Anne Henderson. I've been quilting for over fifty years, and my family urged me to share some of my favorites. So here they are.
The quilts
Click any quilt for the whole storyOn design
When people see my quilts, the thing they ask is, “How do you get those ideas?”
Whatever you are working on, be it a dance, a song or a computer program, the design process is much the same. But I'm about quilts, so here's what works for me.
My interest in quilts is a constant preoccupation. I may brood on an idea for a long time. The list of people, places and things I can steal for a quilt is endless. Then one day these bits begin to join hands, and I go looking in my mind stash for other things I can use — colors, effects. I audition them on my design wall, or lay them out on the bed, and I'm up and running.
It helps to have a little time, quiet and space. Hopefully the quilt begins to talk to you. Genius will strike. Or not — in which case you start again, or put it aside until the creative wave sweeps along. I find a small glass of wine helps, and if that doesn't produce a genius idea, you don't mind.
Like all design, and all projects really: a series of small decisions.
Journal
All posts on the blog →Quilters will cover almost anything. Barbecues and pets are frequent victims, but this is the only quilted car cover I've ever seen.
The effect was too static. Somehow it felt muddy instead of natural. So I took it apart.
A family friend asked me for design advice for a wall quilt. Of course I love to talk about design.
I made these simple blocks for about twelve hours straight. I love this quilt so much.
Each cone has an antique red button for the cherry on top. Anything to play with buttons and glitz.
My mother taught me to sew when I was about ten. Later she taught me and my sister to make quilts from the scraps.
About
My mother taught me to sew when I was about ten.
She lost her mother when she was five and was raised by her dad and older brothers on a small farm — depression-era not-quite-poverty. I saw the farmhouse when I was little and found it shockingly plain and small; her three or four dresses had fit on a few nails in the wall.
After high school she went to live with a beloved aunt in St. Louis, who was a veritable Martha Stewart and taught her all the household arts, including sewing. I think she became a whole new person in those years. Later, Mom taught me and my sister how to sew clothes and make quilts from the scraps.
Since then: fifty years of quilting, a stretch working for Bali Fabrications in the San Francisco Bay Area, a shop in Marietta, Georgia, a quilt guild in St. Petersburg, Florida — and one rescue poodle, Cookie, who is pieced into the car cover.
I love the scrap quilts best of all. I don't know why the quilts I make often get so big.
Come say hello.
If you'd like your own Quilty, want to talk about a design you're stuck on, or just want to tell me about a quilt you're making — write to me. Talking ideas will probably yield inspiration.
Marietta, Georgia
mahquilts.blogspot.com