Quilters piece together art, function

SANDPOINT — Tom Dillin’s wife is a hooker.

Dillin likes to say it, catching listeners off guard.

It means that Brigitte Gerlach, his wife, makes rugs with a technique that requires hooking fabric together.

“You make your own designs and cut your own yarns, Brigitte Gerlach said.

She does it for a hobby.

She and Tom stopped by Sandpoint’s Community Hall Saturday to admire a different type of hand-crafted art: The Panhandle Piecemakers Quilt Guild spring show included dozens of large and small wall hangings and bed-top blankets made in a traditional style that hearkens back to the days of the country’s beginnings.

“They saved bits of rags and sewed them together,” Gerlach said.

Fabric in the days of the country’s birth came from the textile mills of England and was expensive. Homemakers saved scraps to make blankets and decorative items, she said.

As if to combine elements of Gerlach’s history lesson, a placard at a nearby quilt, named “A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That,” adorned with a blue ribbon, explained a technique called English Paper Piecing.

It was one of two quilts entered by Sue Sayers of Cocolalla. Both quilts earned ribbons at Saturday’s show.

The blue-ribbon quilt was completed 12 hours before the deadline, Sayers said.

“There’s nothing like waiting until the last minute,” she said.

Sayer started quilting 15 years ago. She began piecing together the winning quilt more than a year ago, but put it aside until last week.

“I waited until the last minute,” she said. “A quilt show is a good deadline to get finished.”

Panhandle Piecemakers makes, sells and gives quilts away to groups for fundraisers, said Leslie Schubarth, the group’s past president.

Schubarth sold tickets for a buck, and six for $5, for a chance to win a wall-size quilt called Northern Lights.

The blue, purple and sunset-like quilt is a combined effort of group members and will be given away in a Dec. 4 raffle. The money raised is earmarked for shows, quilt lessons and demonstrations, Schubarth said.

“And for special needs in the community,” she said.

The group recently donated proceeds to Kinderhaven, and often makes gifts of quilts to Sandpoint’s foster child program.

Schubarth started quilting a decade ago. It was the art that drew her.

“The colors and textures,” she said.

She entered a large, flowered creation in Saturday’s show that earned the Mayor’s Choice award.

In another partition, JoAnn Sims, the show’s featured quilter explained a quilting technique to Barb Burnside of Spokane.

Called “watercolor,” the technique uses a chain of light-colored fabric to link pieces of darker fabrics, giving the impression of a watercolor painting.

The quilt she used as an example was the first one she completed after retiring in 1994.

“I thought, what in the world am I going to do with my time,” Sims said. “This is the first one I did.”

Burnside is impressed.

“You’re kidding,” Burnside said. “That is just gorgeous.”

Jackie Bacon admires several of Sims’ quilts.

Bacon has taught quilting since the early 1980s, and used to sell quilts at craft fairs.

She drove from Bonners Ferry to the Sandpoint Community Hall.

“I’ve gone a lot farther than that for quilt shows,” she said.

Panhandle Piecemakers Quilt Guild began in 1988 and has approximately 50 members from beginners to experts.

The group meets once per month, and members exhibit at its several shows during the year.

Annual membership costs $15. Call (208) 623-6164.