Patchwork display

Local quilter has stitched 400 fabric works of arts, including miniature pieces

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When it comes to quilts, whether full-size or miniatures, there's only one word that describes Susanne McGlone -- prolific.

Just walk into her Lake Superior Lane home and you're greeted with the beauty and preciseness of her quilts -- on the walls, in the closets, hanging over racks, stacked on a chair, even spread over her bed.

"Remember when I told you I'd done about 200 to 300? Well you better change that to 400," said the veteran quilt-maker, who will have a number of her works on display this Saturday during the Quilt Old Town 2006 showing. "The miniatures are what I really like to do, so I've done a lot of those."

McGlone said several of her miniature quilts will be on display at the Coffee Cup café and a couple of her larger ones will be part of the 100 or so more that will be hanging around the downtown buildings as part of the Spring Jamboree weekend event.

"The miniatures, when they're done, should look like a full-size quilt, but in a miniature form," she said. "Yes, you could say they are something like a scale model."

McGlone and her husband, John, a retired American Airlines pilot who does volunteer woodworking projects for the National Park Service, moved from the Chicago area to Boulder City 20 years ago. But she didn't start quilting until after settling here for four years.

"I have always sewn, all my life," said the 65-year-old former junior high school English and social studies teacher. "I was just looking for a different outlet. There was this nice lady in town, Alice Godwin, who taught classes, and after that I was hooked and I loved it."

McGlone loved it so much she went from student to teacher and even ended up working at Fiddlesticks Quilts, the local supply store for quilters.

"When they opened the store, they asked me to teach and then I started working there," she said. "I've been working at Fiddlesticks for 7 1/2 years and I still teach classes there. It supports my hobby."

Like any hobby, McGlone says, it can be as expensive as you want it to be.

"There are supplies, fabrics, books and you're always looking for inspiration and that comes with books and fabrics and trying new techniques. If you want sewing machines, that's another aspect of the expense. I've got four sewing machines and the furniture is expensive. We're talking thousands of dollars. If you really get into it, it can become expensive, especially if it becomes a passion."

McGlone's first love was embroidery. A lot of what she's learned over the years working with needle and thread appears in many of her quilts.

But as much as she loves her handiwork, there's an even more rewarding aspect to her hobby.

"While making the quilts is important, the best thing to come from my hobby is all the women I've met and become friends with," she said.

McGlone is not alone in the world of Boulder City quilting. There are at least four quilting clubs in the city that meet at the library and that there are a number of quilting shops in the greater Las Vegas area.

"Quilting took off with a resurgence during the bicentennial and took on a whole new life on itself then," she said, noting there are now seven quilting shops in the Las Vegas area. "In the fall, we have the Quilt Shop Hop, which is three days over the Veteran's Day weekend when we go from one store to another and get gifts (and) get points of a pattern. If you go to all seven, you get all the points. And this goes on all over the country."

While the debate on whether quilting is a craft or an art still lingers, McGlone finds a personal enjoyment in turning out quilt after quilt regardless of how the endeavor is classified.

"I get a great deal of satisfaction in knowing I can take a fabric and put it together in a pleasing manner and that it's something good to look at when it's done," she said. "A lot of them are given away as gifts and I sell some in the store. It's a creative artistic outlet and I think that's the way a lot of women look at it."

McGlone, one of several hundred members of the Desert Quilters of Nevada club, has proof on her walls that she's no ordinary quilt maker.

Clumped together on a message board in her neatly laid out sewing, stitching and quilting room are two blue first-place ribbons, one red second-place ribbon and six white third-place ribbons.

"I was always good for third place," McGlone said with a smile. "These are from judged shows. The judge would critique what you did, so it was a good learning experience."