Publication Date: 03/13/2017
WHEATON PARK DISTRICT EMPLOYEE PATTY WALKOWICZ QUILTS “VACATION BLUES” AWAY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wheaton, Ill.—Patty Walkowicz learned about the contest that would take her creativity around the country from an issue of McCall’s Quilting last summer.
“It came the day we had gotten back from vacation,” said Walkowicz, who serves as Administrative Support for the Wheaton Park District’s Mary Lubko Center (208 W. Union Ave., Wheaton, Ill.). “I was paging through it, and there was a Quilt the Blues page, and I thought, ‘That’s my problem, I have the blues.’ I read the rules and started working.”
Choosing a few colors, Walkowicz ordered an official fabric pack and started designing the quilt top with a teal background, navy border, and a grid of 20 squares representing moments and themes from the family vacation to Michigan she had just returned from.
“Mine is very much a traditional design,” she said. “The layout of the quilt is kind of a gift. It just looks right to you.”
Across more than 30 years, Walkowicz has pieced dozens of quilts, from gifts for friends and family to wall hangings to Vacation Blues, which became a finalist in the Quilt the Blues contest in December and will now tour America as part of a traveling exhibit. Visitors to the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo in Atlanta, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and more this year will see her quilt.
“It was very much a labor of love,” Walkowicz said. “I enjoy the challenge of working with the material and seeing how it comes to life as you put it together.”
One of the blocks of Vacation Blues, Path through the Woods, is what it sounds like.
“We followed the GPS in my car and it took us down this shady little forest road, and we did find it on a map, but about the time we went through the two trees that were just barely outside the mirrors, my husband said, ‘Where did your GPS take us, and are we gonna survive this?’” said Walkowicz. “We were on a forest preserve seasonal road.”
They never went that way again, but they did get to the lake house where they took a canoe trip, watched thunderstorms arrive over the water, explored local towns and villages, made a few more wrong turns, and bonded in visible but subtle ways, seen in Eight Hands All Around, another block.
“We worked together very well in the kitchen, making meals. Any time we got ready to go somewhere, everybody was good about making sure the door was locked,
[making sure] everyone was there,” she said. “It was different people [on] different days asking.”
Each project has a different flavor, visually and emotionally.
“They collect a name somewhere along the line,” said Walkowicz, demonstrating with two laundry baskets’ worth of other quilts. “This one’s called Autumn Leaves, because it has leaves on it. The quilt I made for my oldest daughter when she got married is the Masterpiece Quilt.”
Walkowicz started quilting in 1985, taking a class at a fabric shop nearby.
“I thought it would be nice to make a quilt for my mother-in-law and father-in-law,” she said. The quilt sported a split rail pattern, so named for its resemblance to a split rail fence. “It’s a good beginner pattern. I did the quilting on this, and that was about the last time I did my own quilting.”
Quilting involves piecing—creating the top, “what most people think of when they think ‘quilt’” from dozens, even hundreds, of custom fabric shapes—and quilting, or stitching the top to a layer of insulation and a layer of backing. Walkowicz knows her terminology: batting for the layer of insulation, stitch-in-the-ditch for quilting in the seam line, and one unbreakable rule.
“A quilt is not finished until it has a label on the back,” said Walkowicz. “Any quilting teacher will tell you that. It should have where the quilt was made, who made the quilt, who quilted the quilt, and the date.”
Vacation Blues will return home late in 2017, but its traveling won’t be done then.
“When we go on vacation, I’m going to take it with us every year,” Walkowicz said.
Vacation Blues, a quilt created by Patty Walkowicz, Administrative Support at the Wheaton Park District’s Mary Lubko Center (208 W. Union Ave., Wheaton, Ill.), was a finalist in a McCall’s Quilting competition in 2016 and will tour the country this year. Walkowicz pieced the quilt as she reflected on a family vacation to Michigan last summer.
Photo (L) © Wheaton Park District 2017. Photo (R) courtesy of Quilters Newsletter.
Written by: Brett Peto