Friendship across borders - the path to a fulfilling hobby
In 1970, going abroad and spending a year in Wichita Falls, Texas was an unusual thing to do. By chance, I met a student at Midwestern University who helped me when I got lost, - she became a dear friend. She and her husband had come to live at Ramstein Air Force Base for many years, and when they moved to Plattsburgh, upstate New York, I visited them in 1986. Hoping to explore the possibility of starting a school exchange, I happened to walk into German teacher Anne Bailey´s classroom when she was clearing her desk at the end of term prior to the summer holidays. She vividly recalls meeting this crazy young woman with even crazier ideas. But the following year 20 students from Germany were taken to New York City and to Plattsburgh to attend an American high school – all organized without the convenience of emails, not to mention the Web, with just snail mails going back and forth…. During the first visit in 1987, Anne took me to a quilt show, and I was hooked. The traditional Log Cabin pattern particularly attracted my attention, and so I started searching cupboards for old clothes, an apron that had belonged to my grandmother, a blouse my mother had worn when young. Following the old tradition of making a new blanket from old material, I started sewing assiduously piece by piece, mostly by hand. It took me two years to finish this project.
Later, I found other techniques attractive, and because I am not very good at sewing precisely according to set patterns, I came up with different ideas and consider myself now to be a „crazy“ quilter; e.g. irregularities here and there are being hidden by golden and silver stitching or snippets from wedding dresses. Flea markets are a great source for material, I always look out for old silk dresses with sequins or nicely embroidered, a blouse made of lace etc., and there are still family clothes like the dresses my three daughters had worn as children. So, over the years family and friends have received individually created bed covers, lap throws, baby quilts, or small blankets for dolls and teddy bears. As a long-time DKG member, Anne Bailey proposed me for membership to HQ, when she learned about the founding of a Germany state organisation in 1991, which happened in March 1992. And so the circle closes: cheers to friendship across borders!
Marika Heimbach
In 1970, going abroad and spending a year in Wichita Falls, Texas was an unusual thing to do. By chance, I met a student at Midwestern University who helped me when I got lost, - she became a dear friend. She and her husband had come to live at Ramstein Air Force Base for many years, and when they moved to Plattsburgh, upstate New York, I visited them in 1986. Hoping to explore the possibility of starting a school exchange, I happened to walk into German teacher Anne Bailey´s classroom when she was clearing her desk at the end of term prior to the summer holidays. She vividly recalls meeting this crazy young woman with even crazier ideas. But the following year 20 students from Germany were taken to New York City and to Plattsburgh to attend an American high school – all organized without the convenience of emails, not to mention the Web, with just snail mails going back and forth…. During the first visit in 1987, Anne took me to a quilt show, and I was hooked. The traditional Log Cabin pattern particularly attracted my attention, and so I started searching cupboards for old clothes, an apron that had belonged to my grandmother, a blouse my mother had worn when young. Following the old tradition of making a new blanket from old material, I started sewing assiduously piece by piece, mostly by hand. It took me two years to finish this project.
Later, I found other techniques attractive, and because I am not very good at sewing precisely according to set patterns, I came up with different ideas and consider myself now to be a „crazy“ quilter; e.g. irregularities here and there are being hidden by golden and silver stitching or snippets from wedding dresses. Flea markets are a great source for material, I always look out for old silk dresses with sequins or nicely embroidered, a blouse made of lace etc., and there are still family clothes like the dresses my three daughters had worn as children. So, over the years family and friends have received individually created bed covers, lap throws, baby quilts, or small blankets for dolls and teddy bears. As a long-time DKG member, Anne Bailey proposed me for membership to HQ, when she learned about the founding of a Germany state organisation in 1991, which happened in March 1992. And so the circle closes: cheers to friendship across borders!
Marika Heimbach
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