Retired forester turns in hard hat for a long arm

Cathy Calloway was searching for something to do after retiring from her career in forestry. Having grown up sewing garments and with a grandmother who quilted, she already knew her way around a sewing machine and fabric.

The featured quilter at this year’s Flathead Quilters' Guild Quilt Show Friday and Saturday, Calloway says she quickly began honing her new quilting craft once she became a member of the Flathead Quilters' Guild. She’s been a member for a dozen years.

“I started going to quilt shows about 15 years ago,” she said. “I got the bug to do it once I moved up to the Flathead.”

Calloway is now a self-described “long armer.”

“When I joined the Flathead Quilters' Guild’s Outreach Sewing group that gets together once a month at Glacier Quilts to sew quilts for charity, Glacier Quilts let us use their long arm machine,” she said. “It’s so much easier.”

She then bought herself a 12-foot long arm sewing machine and squeezed it into her spare bedroom.

“We had to buy a Murphy bed so it could still be a spare bedroom,” she laughed.

Calloway is both a traditional and non-traditional quilter. She gives credit to Instagram as an infinite resource for design patterns and finding new fabric.

“There is a whole community that uses Instagram as a way to share quilting inspiration,” she said. “Especially during covid times, it was a great way to stay connected.”

“In the last few years, a lot of instructors who used to travel converted their classes to online,” she said. “I was able to take classes and started getting really interested in modern quilting and improvisation”

Much of Calloway’s work is done without a set pattern. Describing her style as eclectic, she uses a design wall to pin things and rearrange them to make her own patterns.

Her quilting is most often free form and features intricate circles, squares, swirls and curvy lines. While some long arms can be programmed to quilt a specific pattern, all of her finish quilting is hand guided. One of her quilts was done with a technique called graffiti quilting — quilting over itself multiple times with no piecing involved.

Calloway’s interest in graffiti quilting was inspired by a class she took in February when she attended the annual modern quilt convention, QuiltCon.

The class was taught by professional designer Karlee Porter, whose signature style is graffiti.

“That was fun,” she said. “It’s the biggest modern quilt convention in the world. I took a bunch of classes and they had 500 modern quilts on display.”

Calloway says she’s passionate about most all aspects of the craft of quilt making, but particularly enjoys picking out her colors.

“There are so many fabulous fabrics out there now and wonderful fabric designers,” she said.

A FEW years ago Calloway started experimenting with natural dyeing her own fabric. This year she planted her flower garden specifically with flowers she knew she could use for dyeing.

“I’ve got pretty much the full rainbow of colors now,” she said.

For example, she collected her orange daylilies all summer, simmered them, then left them overnight to soak. This year she’s learned how to pretreat the fabric using tannins such as oak gall, and then in an alum solution so the fabric will fully absorb the dye.

“Those tannins bind to the fabric,” she explained. “And then when you put the fabric in the dye, the dye binds to the fabric much better.”

Calloway also gets excellent results from onion skins, which produce a beautiful rusty color, and marigolds, which produce a beautiful orange-yellow.

For Calloway, the most challenging part about quilting is trying to stay focused.

“I have a list of so many things I want to do and never can get around to them all,” she said.

Besides its monthly meetings and annual show Calloway, who is also the Flathead Quilters' Guild’s webmaster, says the guild offers a kids quilting camp in June for kids ages 12 to 15 where they get to make their own quilts from start to finish on a long arm, which they then can display at the annual quilt show. The guild also has an arts quilt group that focuses more on smaller, original art projects.

“The guild has a lot of niches for different interests,” she said. “We encourage visitors to come to the meetings. We’re always looking for new folks to come and join us.”

QUILT SHOW

The Flathead Quilters' Guild presents its 2022 Quilt Show, “Sew Connected,” Sept. 16 and 17 at the Flathead County Fairgrounds in Kalispell. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, and 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

The show features close to 200 quilts on display, live demonstrations, quilt and basket raffles, dozens of vendors, and a large boutique. Admission is $7. A portion of proceeds from the show will benefit the Northwest Montana Veterans Food Pantry.

LEARN MORE

The Flathead Quilters’ Guild is celebrating its 41st anniversary this year. Founded in 1981, the guild is open to anyone and can be joined anytime, including at the Quilt Show.

The guild meets the first Thursday of each month (except July). Social time starts at 6:15 p.m, with the business meeting and program starting at 6:30 p.m. Visitors and new members are always welcome.

Meetings are currently at the Gateway Community Center 1203 U.S. 2 W., Kalispell, Room 26, (east side of building and directly behind the main Post Office).

For more information, visit www.flatheadquilters.org or email fqginfo@gmail.com