Teakettle show features dedicated quilter

Rita McClanahan describes herself as not much of a joiner, but she kept coming back after attending one meeting of the Teakettle Quilt Guild in 2006.

“It’s really fun to be with these ladies,” McClanahan said as she unfolded a selection of her quilts at a Friday morning guild sewing session.

Members nominated and voted McClanahan as the guild’s featured quilter for their free annual show taking place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 16, at Glacier Discovery Square in Columbia Falls.

The honor gives McClanahan a special booth to display some of her best work.

She held up her “Tree of Life” quilt, one of her featured pieces for the show. 

“It’s hand-appliquéd and hand-quilted,” she said. “It took me 14 months to make. It will be a wedding present for the first grandchild who gets married.”

Another piece destined for Saturday’s show features a flashy red-and-black pattern conceived and finished during a guild retreat last spring. McClanahan also chose a selection of her baby quilts including one with a backing made of a soft raised minky dot pattern material.

“Babies just love that,” she said, running her fingers over the silky embossed dots. “I make a lot of baby quilts.”

Along with her bed coverings, McClanahan quilts wall coverings, table pieces and bags from totes to duffels. She keeps a photo history of all her work, including her very first quilt made in 1998, in a thick album.

“My daughter got me started,” she said.

According to McClanahan, her daughter, Jody Wolf, was home with young children at the time and started quilting to keep busy. She still was working full-time at a linen supply company when Wolf introduced her to the enjoyable hobby for her limited spare time.

Now 65 and retired, McClanahan said the roles now have switched with her daughter working full time. Wolf still helps McClanahan design patterns such as the one for the quilt she calls “Mickey’s Revenge.”

The piece features Mickey, Wolf’s Boston terrier, lying contentedly amid a bed of broken flowers. From a photo of the dog in the destroyed flowers, Wolf sketched out a pattern to memorialize the moment in a quilt.

“She’s my artist,” McClanahan said. “She has a really good eye.”

Although McClanahan was new to quilting in 1998, she had been sewing and using her hands to make things for much of her life. She was into woodworking with her husband, Floyd, until a sawdust allergy ended that hobby for her.

“We both grew up in families that didn’t have much,” she said. “If we wanted something, we either made it or did without it.”

She recalled that her mother made most of her clothes except when a medical emergency forced her to buy her daughter a dress from a store to wear for her first day of school when she was 4 years old.

“The story goes that I was so nervous that I chewed all the lace off it,” she said with a laugh.

Quilting fits perfectly into the frugality ethic of making something nice out of leftovers, which is just what McClanahan did to make one quilt she brought to the Friday quilting day. It features tiny triangles that her daughter had left over from a project.

For other pieces, she shops at local stores and goes to garage sales, a great source for inexpensive material. With each quilt, McClanahan said she learns something new.

She always has a project sitting in her sewing machine to pick up when she gets in the mood.

“I love quilting. I’m going to do this as long as I can cut material,” she said. “It keeps me busy so I don’t sit around and veg in front of the T.V.” 

With good scissors, a sewing machine, a couple of rulers, a rotary cutter and mat, McClanahan said anyone can get going. She encourages interested people to join the Teakettle Quilt Guild .

The group meets for business on the third Saturday of the month and quilts every Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the North Valley Physical Therapy building on Nucleus Avenue in Columbia Falls. She said guild members teach each other and help solve quilting problems while enjoying each other’s company. 

“I came once and I was hooked,” McClanahan said.

This Saturday’s show provides a broad overview of the many styles of quilting and products produced by about 30 guild members. It’s McClanahan’s day to shine in the spotlight as the featured quilter and to meet fellow enthusiasts.

“I’ll have my book so people can come by and look and ask me questions,”  she said. “It’s just a good day for people to get together and visit with fellow quilters.”

Along with dozens of artistic quilts, the exhibition at Glacier Discovery Square, 540 Nucleus Ave., offers demonstrations, vendors, a boutique of quilted goods for sale and drawings for a basket of products and the 2011 guild quilt.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com .