Stitchin' Time: Quilting helps lawyers to uncover their own creative patternsAuthor(s): JILL SCHACHNER CHANENSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 84, No. 3 (MARCH 1998), pp. 88-89Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27839889 .

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OUT OF THE OFFICE

Stitchin' Time m

Quilting helps lawyers to uncover W their own creative patterns

BY JILL SCHACHNER CHANEN

There's no mistaking Judge No dine Miller's courtroom. No framed copies of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights adorn the dark wal nut paneling, nor will a spectator find heavy oil paintings in ornate, gilded frames.

Instead, the walls of her court room in the Franklin County Court house in Columbus, Ohio, are cov ered in quilts?and not just any quilts. Each one is handmade, most ly by Miller herself.

All told, five hang in her court room, another decorates her office and still another covers a wall in her conference room. The colorful displays underline the judge's view that courts should be less intimidating. And they remind

Miller of the patience it takes to piece a quilt together.

"The time and energy and meticulousness required to make a quilt is what makes it so valuable and such an heir loom," says Miller, whose docket on the common pleas bench in cludes Ohio's tobacco litigation and a mix of felony trials.

Patching Together a Tale Each of Miller's quilts car

ries a special meaning, telling a story that is revealed by the colors and patterns. Among her courtroom collection, one quilt is a

memorial to one of her beloved German shepherds?sewn with the dog's colors of brown, black and tan. Another is an ode to autumn leaves, and still another is the first in a five-part series of lighthouses? patterned after those she has seen during trips to the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard.

A self-described "prolific quil ter," Miller says she took up the craft nearly 20 years ago after her favorite knitting supply store be came a quilting shop. Her mother and grandmother had been quilters, but Miller never picked it up. She signed up for classes at the store

and has been quilting ever since. Unlike knitting, which Mil

ler's mother taught her to occu py her hands because she was a hyperactive child, quilting reflects a creative side of her per sonality.

"I am not a terribly cre ative person; most lawyers are not," Miller says. "But

quilting seems to be the

thing that fits into the one creative niche that I have."

Though quilting is a form of needlecraft in which layers of fabric are sewn together with an intricate stitch to create a layered, puffy ef fect, quilters say it really is an art form.

"What you see in a quilt is a

piece of creative art that has been compiled by the quilter," explains quilter Nida Brown, a Glendale, Calif., estate planning lawyer with Brown & Brown. "It is the colors and pattern that [are] the expres sion of the individual."

Though quilts often reflect his toric designs such as log cabins or

Susan Fox Gillis, shown with her cat, Holmes, took up quilting last year to create this piece for her first grandchild.

wedding rings, it is the quilter's choice of fabrics and the arrange

ment of the fabrics within the pat tern that can make one finished work look different from any other.

Quilts can be pieced or ap pliqued. Pieced quilts are composed of numerous sections of fabric that have been hand-cut into shapes and then sewn together into the chosen pattern to form the top layer of the quilt. In appliqued quilts, one piece of fabric is cut into a design and then sewn on top of a single, larger

88 ABA JOURNAL / MARCH 1998 ABAJ/CYNTHIA HOWE

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:43:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

piece of fabric to form the top layer. Once the top layer is done?

which, depending on its complexity, can take anywhere from a few days to a year?the batting, or filler, is added. Next comes a bottom layer, typically a single, colored piece of fabric. The three layers are then sewn together with a running stitch.

Finding the proper combina tions of fabrics and colors is an art form in itself, says Susan Fox Gillis, a litigator with Schoen & Smith in Chicago who took up quilting last

year upon learning that she was to become a grandmother.

After Gillis selected

j??H^^^Hh^ a pattern and assembled

^^H^HV all the fabrics she had jj^^Hj^^^^^P chosen for a baby bunting iBjKf^??^^ quilt she was planning to

H^J^HH^ make for her first grand VS?^EB1b child, she realized that the

r!H9RK?B color combinations did not

0:^H^B?B blend together, forcing her

Pl^HNrlflK to rework the piece. f^HU|- | Yet despite her initial i'^Hj".:? frustration, Gillis says the ^^ /'^" craft is a welcome contrast ^ ? i to her law practice. "The ^ yEK j& reason quilting seemed HHfl|R* JB like such a good hobby is pBBp" 'W? because it is so visual," she

Ijjp^ ? "You have a tangible IBp TfW product at the end that you

w can sit and look at and en

J| joy. Our work as litigators is

In spite of the meticu # lousness and care demanded i by the process of piecing fabric

J into a pattern, quilting is alive

?^ff|^Pf4 an(* we^ *n a society that j^^^HBn thrives on instant gratifica

tion. According to the Ameri V

~ can Quilter's Society, which is

based in Paducah, Ky., some 12 million people quilt in the United States today, including a substan tial number of men. The number of active quilters has held steady since interest in the craft peaked during the 1976 Bicentennial.

Part of the explanation for the popularity of quilting is its relative ease. A quilter need only know how to use a needle and thread to begin, says Bonnie Browning, a quilting instructor and the annual quilt show chair of the American Quil ter's Society.

The key to quilting, Browning says, is learning to cut the fabric into evenly sized pieces and to sew them together with evenly spaced seams. Most new sewing machines

have been programmed for the quil ter's running stitch, expediting the process and helping to create a more evenly sewn product.

Longtime quilters like Miller, however, eschew the modern conve niences of sewing machines for the look and feel of a hand-sewn prod uct. "It does require a lot of pa tience," she says of the time it takes to sew together all the pieces. "I prefer to do it by hand because I like the look of it much better."

For those quilters who are in terested in designing their own cov erings, computer software can simplify the process. One of the

Jlldge NOdine MHleP decorates her Columbus, Ohio, courtroom with her handiwork. The quilts help express her view that courts should be less intimidating.

high-tech offerings is a program that measures the amount of fabric a quilter will need to complete a pattern, Browning adds.

Get Thee to the Bee Visual and tangible satisfaction

aside, Browning says she believes the real reason for the craft's contin ued popularity is that it is an outlet for people with stress-filled lives.

"It's cheaper than therapy," she quips. "Quilting is very therapeutic, whether you are working alone or in a group. One of the reasons that old-fashioned quilting bees were so popular was because it was time to

socialize with your friends." Judge Miller agrees. She meets

with her Columbus quilting group one day a week. "The old gals on the prairie had it all figured out. The ca maraderie of women and the sympa thy of women is a wonderful thing."

Gillis, who is learning the craft with two other Chicago lawyers, finds the fellowship of her quilting group to be an unexpected benefit of quilting. "I can sense the great joy women must have had from quilting bees in times past. We sit for a few hours every couple of weeks and chat. There is this wonderful sense of camaraderie. We ... talk about

current events, the legal community and our families. It is very pleasing."

Brown says quilting is the only thing that can make her forget the pressures of her day. "What I par ticularly like about quilting is that it is a very restful experience. I start quilting and the pressures of being in the practice of law disap pear. I am distracted enough worry ing about my stitching or how the pieces will fit together."

And when she is finished dis tracting herself, she also has a beautiful quilt to remind her about the benefits of not always thinking about the law.

abaj/DouG martin ABA JOURNAL / MARCH 1998 89

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