Quilters collect patterns around the continent
A customer came into the Piecing It Together quilt shop last week on a mission.
“She was from Florida, and her friends texted her while [she was] on vacation to stop at our shop,” said Johanna Blaranik, owner of the store in Ross.
The customer wanted a free quilting pattern — available from the first day of summer until Labor Day — of a lighthouse that actually lights up and a baby sea serpent and octopus playing with a beach ball.
The free pattern was part of a program called Row by Row Experience, which has intrigued quilters across the nation and in parts of Canada since it began four years ago in Syracuse, N.Y. It has become a quilting phenomenon and now involves 2,700 participating stores.
Through the summer, each store is giving away a different quilting pattern based on a designated theme. This summer’s theme is “Row by Row H20.”
Quilters travel from shop to shop — many while on vacation — and collect the patterns. Any quilter who makes a quilt using at least eight of the different patterns is eligible to win prizes.
Each store offers a pattern that is a 36inch-long quilt row — a break from the traditional quilting blocks — and numerous contests. One competition, sponsored by Creative Grids, an Ohio sewing notions company, will select a favorite row through voting on Facebook.
At of the end of the second week of voting, the sea serpent pattern was in first place, Mrs. Blaranik said. “It is quite an honor,” she said. “Our regular customers who have been to shops out of state say people are asking them, ‘Oh, you’re from Pittsburgh. Do you live close to the shop with the sea serpent pattern?’” Mrs. Blaranik said.
The pattern was designed by Annie Tuley, of Penn in Westmoreland County, who has taught classes at Piecing It Together for nearly 22 years. Her design was inspired by a painting in Provincetown, Mass., that her family remembers from their summer visits to Cape Cod. A pocket on the light house
can hold a battery-operated LED light.
The pattern has more to say than meets the eye.
“I like to make a scene and have a story with it. Everyone has gone to bed, so that’s why you don’t have any sailboats out. But that’s when these little creatures come out to play, but we don’t know about it because we go to bed, too,” said Mrs. Tuley, who grew up in Norwich, Vt.
She is in the fifth generation of quilters in her family. She learned how to do mending by age 3, designed her own work and learned embroidery from her grandmother at age 5 and made her first quilt by age 9.
“My grandmother told me, ‘Just draw what you want to embroider.’ My first design was of a red fish with a green eye — hey, I was 5,’” she said with a laugh. Today, she also designs whimsical baby and children’s quilts.
Quilters can collect a row of cattails pattern inspired by Moraine State Park at the Amy Baughman Sewing & Quilting Center in Cranberry; a water wheel row one at Hampton’s Quilted Needle; or two different designs of a paint box of watercolors or watermelon slices complete with picnic ants at The Quilt Company, also in Hampton.
Designs specific to Pittsburgh are available at Quilters Corner in Finleyville and at the Gloria Horn Sewing Studio in Mt. Lebanon. Both feature the 16th Street Bridge, but the patterns are different.
Mary Beth Hartnett, designer and owner of Quilters Corner, said the Row by Row patterns can be used to make items other than quilts. Her shop is participating for the third year, and she has seen people create wall hangings, table runners, bolster pillows and tote bags.
“It looks like a piece of art that draws attention to quilting, since a wide audience of people see this,” she said.
“It opens up the possibilities of quilting as a form of expression to people who might not have thought of it that way.”
To find participating stores: www.rowbyrowexperience.com. For the Creative Grids Facebook link: Piecingittogether.biz.