Irene Berry - Senior Technical Editor, Quilters Newsletter, Managing Editor, Quilt It
It was 1973, and everyone was reading the Whole Earth Catalog and trying to get back to the land. I was going to art school in Brooklyn, New York, and that’s when I made my first quilt as a gift for my boyfriend. I appliqued cast-off clothing to a bed sheet. After marrying the boyfriend, I dressed windows in a candy store, moved across the country, taught pottery, had kids, worked in dental offices, and kept on making quilts.
Resisting the 1980’s coordinated-calico-quilt trend, I developed my own style, based on tradition but involving as many weird fabrics as possible. I still cherish my first sewing machine, a used 1936 Singer 201, but I’ve learned the value of having a machine designed especially for quilters. Even though the antique quilts I love were made with little more than a scissors and a paper pattern, I can’t do without sharp rotary blades, an array of rulers, microtex needles, and expensive silk thread. I go to work every day and think, talk, and write about quilts, and I marvel at my good fortune.
