9. QuiltEssential

As I've mentioned, I had reason to wonder about how efficiently I was using my time back in the middle of the 1980s. I had a husband who worked long hours and two growing boys who had activities of their own. Between family responsibilities and a part-time job, my schedule was so complicated that I kept it on file cards, with colored sticky dots and highlighters marking where I needed to be and when. (That didn't prevent me from forgetting to pick up my children—and the rest of the carpool—one afternoon when I lost track of which day it was, but that's another story.) To survive and prosper, our family needed a provider of income, a supervisor/organizer, a chauffeur, a cook, a housekeeper, and a volunteer. Sadly, it did not need a quilter.

Yet I (and in fairness I must say my patient husband) noticed that I was finding time to quilt anyway. Cleaning and laundry might fall by the wayside, but I met quilt show deadlines without fail. My friends and I met weekly to view and to encourage each other's progress in quilting. These meetings were a modern version of quilting bees, I suppose: a lifeline linking me to people with whom I could share creative impulses, excitement about the "art" of quilting, and frustrations about not having enough time and energy to be the artists we aspired to be. We took our shared interest seriously, going to exhibits, keeping up with and teaching each other about the latest trends, fabrics, colors, gadgets, techniques, books.

Over many cups of coffee, a friend and I wondered whether we could make this hobby pay for itself and justify some of our quilting hours. One planning meeting led to another, and in 1988 the two of us started a business which we called “QuiltEssential.” We would make quilts on commission, we would teach, and we would even try making art together. The quilt pictured in this entry, "Where the Wild Things Are," is the first we designed together, and its story is worth telling if only because it brings back such good memories of friendship and thoroughly engaging work.

Back then the world was becoming aware of the Windows operating system for computers. I had had an early interest in computers through many previous jobs and saw the idea of multiple windows as an interesting organizing principle for—what else—a quilt. Lynne and I had written a grant proposal to create a quilt to raise money for a town project. As we sat down to design the quilt, that "windows" idea seemed promising to us as a way to view and highlight some of Mansfield's landscape features.

Oh, those were heady times, as a cable-tv crew filmed us "on location" at some of the town's wetlands and ponds, and the local newspaper ran a prominent article about us and the quilt. All so that we could sell lots of raffle tickets to raise funds for the building project which would house both the library and the local council on aging. And we did.

In the process we also created a new "quilter" who was neither Lynne nor I but a third, composite “spirit.” We learned a remarkable amount from working together: Lynne never compromised on color, and she was wise not to, because she was invariably right. I never compromised about line--well, all right, on occasion, in deference to her desire to avoid fussy piecing, we both had to adjust our expectations of what constituted good design. We had much to learn, and learn we did. A promising beginning.