Featured Member: Mary Warner
Quilter Mary Warner did not take up needle and thread until she was living far away from the United States. Mary lived with her husband, John, in seven different countries for periods of two to four years while he worked for the U.S. State Department. She was a young mother in the Dominican Republic when she first learned the craft of quilting.
“It was in 1996 and we lived in Santo Domingo, the capital city that suffered daily power cuts, in an apartment complex where they only turned the back-up generator on in the morning and at night—when the people went to work and when they came home. We lived on the eighth floor. Multiple times per day, we didn’t have lights and the elevator didn’t work.
“I was on bedrest with my second child, and I read and did puzzles, and it was driving me crazy. Fortunately, I had these great girlfriends, wives of Foreign Service husbands, who would walk up eight flights to take care of my toddler and walk the dog. One of them had learned to quilt from her grandmother and she brought me my first squares of fabric and showed me how to cross-stitch. She said, 'You do these 12 blocks and I’ll show you how to put them together with sashing and then I’ll teach you how to quilt.’ She was kind of shocked when she came back the next day and I had finished the 12 blocks. And I’ve never stopped.”
As they moved on to other countries, Mary learned more sewing skills from local people in Namibia and Australia. By the time John was posted to Malawi in Africa in 2007, she had gathered enough confidence to start teaching a quilting class to a local women’s village group that had been formed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an international development organization.
“Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. The population is so huge and the actual land mass is very small. I had a group of really determined women, about 30. Most of them were HIV-positive or their spouses or children were. They were trying to find ways to generate income. We would sew once a week after a big support group meeting. They learned a new skill, found local markets for their products, and they made money.
“I learned how to use an iron where you had to put hot coals in it, things that I would never have learned back home. There was no electricity in the village, and pressing is a really important part of quilting. If it was sunny out there, we went outside and sat on the ground. I always had to have a long dress or I had a piece of African fabric (“chitenge”) in my car to tie around my waist. In Malawian villages, I would have felt very uncomfortable in pants.
“The projects were so simple, things like potholders that they didn’t have to charge much for. We would go shopping together and they would see what the fabric cost, what the batting cost, what the thread cost. We would sell at a bazaar we tied in with the International School.
“In the beginning I was giving them everything but they found their niches and then the second year, we had three ladies from CRS who were very instrumental in helping them. So then by the third year they actually were doing it all themselves and they found their own markets.”
Mary’s mother-in-law, Laura Ann Warner, had introduced her to the Cave House, the first home of Holston Mountain Artisans, and when she was home, she visited often to purchase gifts for friends overseas. Laura Ann encouraged her to enter her own quilts to be juried and she was accepted as a member, one of the 10% allowed outside of the 50-miles radius of Abingdon. Cooperative members then answered her call for fabric donations, which were sent to Malawi for the women’s use. This led to Mary’s further involvement in the co-op when she returned to Bristol during the summers, and then moved back permanently in 2016.
“I helped hang the quilt show in the Annex and met people during the Virginia Highlands Festival. I joined the Wolf Hills Quilt Guild and I made new friends. This has been so important to me, to have friends to talk to. It gets harder to meet people when you don’t have kids in school and when you are busy because a lot of things are happening. I’m so glad that I am still here and involved in this group.”
Very few people still quilt by hand, the old-fashioned way, but Mary keeps up this tradition.
“I’ve tried small projects doing machine quilting, but it’s not fun for me. To put a top together on the machine is okay but when you are machine-quilting, to me it is very intense. Quilting for me is not work; it’s relaxing. I got into hand quilting seriously when the boys were young. They were “sporty.” They’d train for hours, several times a week. So, I’d bring a cushion to sit on the bleachers and I would just quilt. When you’re reading a book, you can lose your place if you get distracted, but with quilting, you can just stop anytime and you’re still in the same place. I love that you don’t see the knot in the finished product."
Mary’s quilts vary in style and colors. She says, “I don’t like to repeat the same pattern. If I had to pick one favorite, it would be a log cabin. That’s what I typically used with village women overseas because that’s one with straight lines, simple. Even if you only have a pair of rusty scissors and don’t have a cutting board, you can make it work. It used to be always traditional to have a red block in the center, for the fire, the hearth. I would tell people in Africa, ‘This is your home, this is the warmth.’ They would get talking about their families and how they perceived the piecing of the log cabin. ‘This is me and this is my children. This is my grandchildren.’ It was an incredible experience working with, teaching, and learning from those women.”
Quilter Mary Warner did not take up needle and thread until she was living far away from the United States. Mary lived with her husband, John, in seven different countries for periods of two to four years while he worked for the U.S. State Department. She was a young mother in the Dominican Republic when she first learned the craft of quilting.
“It was in 1996 and we lived in Santo Domingo, the capital city that suffered daily power cuts, in an apartment complex where they only turned the back-up generator on in the morning and at night—when the people went to work and when they came home. We lived on the eighth floor. Multiple times per day, we didn’t have lights and the elevator didn’t work.
“I was on bedrest with my second child, and I read and did puzzles, and it was driving me crazy. Fortunately, I had these great girlfriends, wives of Foreign Service husbands, who would walk up eight flights to take care of my toddler and walk the dog. One of them had learned to quilt from her grandmother and she brought me my first squares of fabric and showed me how to cross-stitch. She said, 'You do these 12 blocks and I’ll show you how to put them together with sashing and then I’ll teach you how to quilt.’ She was kind of shocked when she came back the next day and I had finished the 12 blocks. And I’ve never stopped.”
As they moved on to other countries, Mary learned more sewing skills from local people in Namibia and Australia. By the time John was posted to Malawi in Africa in 2007, she had gathered enough confidence to start teaching a quilting class to a local women’s village group that had been formed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an international development organization.
“Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. The population is so huge and the actual land mass is very small. I had a group of really determined women, about 30. Most of them were HIV-positive or their spouses or children were. They were trying to find ways to generate income. We would sew once a week after a big support group meeting. They learned a new skill, found local markets for their products, and they made money.
“I learned how to use an iron where you had to put hot coals in it, things that I would never have learned back home. There was no electricity in the village, and pressing is a really important part of quilting. If it was sunny out there, we went outside and sat on the ground. I always had to have a long dress or I had a piece of African fabric (“chitenge”) in my car to tie around my waist. In Malawian villages, I would have felt very uncomfortable in pants.
“The projects were so simple, things like potholders that they didn’t have to charge much for. We would go shopping together and they would see what the fabric cost, what the batting cost, what the thread cost. We would sell at a bazaar we tied in with the International School.
“In the beginning I was giving them everything but they found their niches and then the second year, we had three ladies from CRS who were very instrumental in helping them. So then by the third year they actually were doing it all themselves and they found their own markets.”
Mary’s mother-in-law, Laura Ann Warner, had introduced her to the Cave House, the first home of Holston Mountain Artisans, and when she was home, she visited often to purchase gifts for friends overseas. Laura Ann encouraged her to enter her own quilts to be juried and she was accepted as a member, one of the 10% allowed outside of the 50-miles radius of Abingdon. Cooperative members then answered her call for fabric donations, which were sent to Malawi for the women’s use. This led to Mary’s further involvement in the co-op when she returned to Bristol during the summers, and then moved back permanently in 2016.
“I helped hang the quilt show in the Annex and met people during the Virginia Highlands Festival. I joined the Wolf Hills Quilt Guild and I made new friends. This has been so important to me, to have friends to talk to. It gets harder to meet people when you don’t have kids in school and when you are busy because a lot of things are happening. I’m so glad that I am still here and involved in this group.”
Very few people still quilt by hand, the old-fashioned way, but Mary keeps up this tradition.
“I’ve tried small projects doing machine quilting, but it’s not fun for me. To put a top together on the machine is okay but when you are machine-quilting, to me it is very intense. Quilting for me is not work; it’s relaxing. I got into hand quilting seriously when the boys were young. They were “sporty.” They’d train for hours, several times a week. So, I’d bring a cushion to sit on the bleachers and I would just quilt. When you’re reading a book, you can lose your place if you get distracted, but with quilting, you can just stop anytime and you’re still in the same place. I love that you don’t see the knot in the finished product."
Mary’s quilts vary in style and colors. She says, “I don’t like to repeat the same pattern. If I had to pick one favorite, it would be a log cabin. That’s what I typically used with village women overseas because that’s one with straight lines, simple. Even if you only have a pair of rusty scissors and don’t have a cutting board, you can make it work. It used to be always traditional to have a red block in the center, for the fire, the hearth. I would tell people in Africa, ‘This is your home, this is the warmth.’ They would get talking about their families and how they perceived the piecing of the log cabin. ‘This is me and this is my children. This is my grandchildren.’ It was an incredible experience working with, teaching, and learning from those women.”
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Click on the pictures above to see larger images of Mary's work which has been influenced by her time in Africa. The two squares are sections of table runners decorated with buttons that were made by a native woman in South Africa. The wall hanging on the right features two water ladies, a common sight in Africa. The batik design was created by a native of Zimbabwe.
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Members Gallery
These are just a few of our 130+ members, most of whom live within 50 miles of Holston Mountain Artisans. Click on the pictures to see a larger image. |
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