Quilter Kathy Hren (second from left) of Dearborn shares her latest quilt during a May 11 meeting of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church, while Sandra Shepherd Legg (left) of Detroit and Louise Chadha of Dearborn listen.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – From landscapes that look like paintings from afar to geometrically patterned, colorful creations, the talented members of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society have elevated quilting to an art form.
On the second Thursday of each month, the group holds a 10 a.m. business meeting and informal show-and-tell at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church, 24110 Cherry Hill Road.
They meet at the McFadden-Ross House, 915 S. Brady, at 6 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month for demonstrations and hand sewing, and at 10 a.m. on the fourth Thursday of the month for presentations and to sit and sew.
Quilter Carol Okubo of Dearborn said the first quilt she made was for her now 19-year-old daughter when she was a baby.
“I do a lot of hand-sewing and I find it very meditative,” she said. “I also love the colors.”
Okubo said she can’t paint or draw but she can use the fabric that someone else has designed and put it together into a new design.
“It brightens up my life so to speak,” she said. “I’ve never worked from a pattern, but I will often work from pictures that I see.”
Okubo said quilting is a creative outlet for her.
“I can’t stop,” she said with a laugh.
Quilter Carol Okubo (left) of Dearborn talks about her quilt during a May 11 meeting of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church, while Louise Chadha of Dearborn listens.
Quilter Kathy Hren of Dearborn, whose intricate works look like paintings from afar, said she has only been quilting for about seven years.
She said after she was diagnosed with cancer 11 years ago, quilting became her therapy. Now, despite how her quilting journey began, she prefers to be seen as just herself without the cancer connection.
Hren said her passion for living inspires her work.
She said she always sewed to a certain extent, and made Halloween costumes for her grandchildren on her Kenmore sewing machine.
“Traditional quilting is nice, but then I segued into art quilting and it’s just never stopped,” Hren said. “I’ve done a couple of shows where I have been a featured artist and I’ve won several awards, but that has just been in the past five or six years.”
She said the creativity of her art quilting allows her to thrive.
Quilter Janet Steele of Detroit shows a quilted purse she made during a May 11 meeting of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church.
Quilter and group leader Louise Chadha of Dearborn said she enjoys hanging out with her fellow quilters.
“Everyone is so kind and welcoming,” she said. “I just feel so lucky to have found them all and I just love this group.”
Chadha said she started quilting about 20 years ago, and while she is self-taught, she said she has learned a lot from the other members of the group and has taken a few classes along the way.
She said she enjoys quilting because she loves fabric and likes making stuff.
“I see something and think, ‘Oh, that looks really cool – I’d like to make that for myself or someone else,’” Chadha said. “And the women in this group have such a variety of talents and skills and things that they are interested in.”
She said the quilters in the group create both traditional and modern work and even wearable items.
“We are not a huge group, but there is just so much variety,” Chadha said. “It’s just a wealth of experience to come and hang out with these ladies.”
She said it is easy to start quilting.
“Just a desire to do it, some fabric, scissor and a needle and thread,” Chadha said. “You can do it all by hand – I started out doing it by hand and graduated to a machine.”
She said there are such a variety of ways to begin quilting and projects with which to start that no one should be intimidated from trying.
Quilter Anne Marie Hamel (left) of Dearborn shows her grandchildren-themed quilt during a May 11 meeting of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church, while Ginny Weaver of Canton Township listens.
Quilter Sandra Shepherd Legg of Detroit said she started quilting when she was in high school, using scraps of material from dresses that her mother made for her.
“I still have that quilt, and it’s not very good, but it reminds me of all of the dresses that she made,” she said.
Legg said she left quilting for a while and did some couture clothing sewing and taught at Haberman Fabrics for a while, but a part of her longed to return to quilting.
“Right now, my passion is applique quilts and doing hand work,” she said. “I really find it relaxing.”
Legg said she enjoys the entire process of quilting.
“I don’t need the product and I don’t need the quilt in the end, but I enjoy the planning, the finding of fabrics and the putting it together,” she said.
Legg said she gives away some of her quilts as gifts and others to charities, and she has sold some of them at quilt shows.
Quilter Michelle Tolenko (right) of Canton Township discusses her penguin-themed quilt during a May 11 meeting of the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church, while Diane Markley of Canton Township listens.
“It’s very relaxing and one of the things that I really treasure is the time I did a quilt with my mother, who lived in Florida, and she has passed since then,” she said. “She loved doing embroidery and she did a lot of Redwork embroidery of kids playing different games, and I put that together into a quilt.”
Legg said they never sat down together to work on the quilt, but sent pieces back and forth to each other between Florida and Michigan.
“We would talk on the phone and it was really a nice experience,” she said. “I would recommend to anybody to find somebody who’s a friend or a family member to do something like that together. There is so much more meaning in that kind of quilt than just buying the fabric and putting it together.”
Quilter Marian Stokke of Dearborn said quilting is her obsession, and she loves hand stitching and doing embroidery.
“I buy $2 shirts and play,” she said. “It becomes an obsession.”
Stokke said she can’t watch television or sit in a meeting and not be stitching.
She said she started embroidering as a teenager, when she was a self-proclaimed hippy.
“I had overalls that were legitimately worn instead of bought with holes, and then I would stitch around the holes of the blue jeans,” Stokke said.
For more information about the group, go to the General Henry Dearborn Quilting Society Facebook page.
