Creating Quilts with Warmth and Love

Hello all! I’m Ellen, a creative who likes to write, draw (sometimes), take photos, and make quilts.

Writing. I decided when I was six that I wanted to be a writer.  I had recently learned to read and I was transported by books.  I wanted to be a person who wrote books that other people would want to read.  Well, I never did write the Great American Novel, but I did get published. 

I worked for several years in the 90s as a freelance writer, copyeditor, and proofreader for Gale Research (now Cengage Learning, Encyclopedia.com, etc.), which was based in Detroit and then the second largest reference publisher in the US.  A friend from grad school connected me with one of their editors, and I wrote mostly pocket biographies for inclusion in reference books like Native American Tribes, Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, Contemporary Black Biography, and Women in World History. 

It was and remains a big thrill to see my name in print.  I have also had articles published in McCall’s Quilting and Quilter’s Home Magazine.  Hands down, the greatest job I have ever had. 

I have written poetry since high school, through college, and off and on over the years.  Some of these have been published in college literary magazines.  For me, my poems are not just expression, but their art comes from what they look like on a page, not what they sound like.  I’ve never been into poetry readings or poetry slams because of this.  It’s the words, the combination of the words, their placement on a page. It’s very much a visual art for me. 

Photography. I got my first camera (a Kodak Instamatic) in high school and began taking pictures of things that I seemed to see from different perspectives than others did.  I eventually graduated to a 35mm camera, and now I’m back to the camera in my phone.  I really enjoy finding beauty in ordinary things that others probably overlook, often what is on the ground in front of me.  I don’t rearrange or reposition what’s there, I just take the picture.  I call these my Detritus photos.

Modern ruins are another source of fascination for me: falling-down barns and outbuildings, leaning mailboxes.  The old, the unloved, the neglected.  I don’t really do anything with these photos aside from posting them on Facebook or putting them into calendars.

QUILTING. My primary creative outlet, at this stage of my life, is quilting.  I started making quilts about thirty years ago, kind of on a whim.  While my mother was an excellent seamstress and made most of my clothes when I was a child, she was not a quilter.  And I was not into sewing.   I had to do some sewing in a junior high Home Ec module and I just loathed it. 

So when I decided I should make a quilt back in 1997 or so, I had to make it entirely by hand because I didn’t own a sewing machine.  And I wasn’t about to buy one if I wasn’t going to continue to make more quilts. I made maybe six quilt tops and actually finished three of them by hand quilting them, and by that point I was hooked … and really, really tired of the hand-sewing thing.  So I bought a machine and joined a quilt guild.

I used to keep track of the quilts I made, but that fell by the wayside some time ago.  I think I’ve made in the neighborhood of 500 quilts.  Most of these have been given away to family and friends, and when I got into the guild, I discovered philanthropy.  For the last eight years I have been one of the co-chairs of the philanthropy program of Valley of the Mist Quilters Guild in Temecula, CA.  We make and donate quilts to foster kids, women and children at a local domestic violence shelter, as well as veterans. 

My primary focus is to make twin-size bed quilts for the formerly homeless veterans who have been taken in by US Vets.org, a national nonprofit.  US Vets talks to homeless vets and, if they’re willing, brings them in off the streets, gets them connected with the VA and medical and psychiatric attention, and houses them. Eventually they get jobs and move back into the world.  

The local US Vets operation is called Veterans Village, and is located on the grounds of March Air Reserve Base in Moreno Valley, CA.  The vets’ beds are nothing fancy—twin beds.  We make twin size quilts for their beds.  I personally make about 20 quilts each year for philanthropy.  I rarely ever know who got one of my quilts, but I’ve been told that these quilts mean a lot to the guys who receive them, and that’s all the motivation I need.

Most quilt guilds do some kind of charitable work.  Personally, I don’t like the word “charity,” primarily because so many quilters use it carelessly.  That carelessness is usually evident by the words “just for” preceding it.  As in, “This fabric isn’t great, but it’ll be okay because it’s just for charity.”  That means leftovers, afterthoughts, whatever.  And this approach, to me, is wrong. 

People who find themselves on the receiving end of charity typically don’t want to be there.  I think we can assume that the charity recipient is probably at one of the lowest points in his or her life.  To give a person a quilt of poor-quality materials, or poor construction, or ugly fabric is to add insult to injury.      

Between foster kids and homeless vets and people struggling in the aftermath of natural disasters, there’s really an endless need for donated quilts. In other words, unless the arthritis in my hands gets too bad … I don’t see myself stopping !