This is the Story of a Quilting Husband

Check out Sassy the Schnauzer’s latest adventures in her Schnauzer Snips page. 

I recently finished a wonderful audiobook written and read by Ann Patchett: This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (2013) – a brilliant collection of her essays. (Yes, I should just abandon my plan for a year of fictional audiobooks as I continue to primarily listen to nonfiction…)

In Ms. Patchett’s novel she tells, as the title suggests, the story of her happy marriage in one of her essays. I have been fortunate to be happily married for 25+ years to my husband Terry and recently finishing this novel inspired the title of this post.

This is the Story of a Quilting Husband

My husband Terry has always been supportive of my quilting hobby (as he enjoys a nap under a cozy handmade quilt). He never questioned the quilting fabric purchases during my intense “fabric acquisition periods” (refer to the post Craft Book Hoarder?!?!? and substitute “craft book” with “quilting fabric”).

Terry would accompany me to quilt shops and patiently wait while I shopped. Eventually he developed the habit of looking for dog themed fabric (especially if the fabric had schnauzers in it) whenever we went to a quilt shop. This became his special self appointment assignment (which eventually led to a large collection of dog themed fabric in my stash). Occasionally when I was done shopping at the quilt shop, Terry would still be looking around.

Terry became popular among my quilting friends when we lived in Seattle – he drove an Astro Van (which I called the “moving living room”) and he drove several of my quilting friends, myself and our two miniature schnauzers at the time, Fritz and Snickers, all around the Seattle area for Quilt Shop Hop. We must have spent 10 hours that day going to quilt shops and on the road driving a hundred or more miles trying to go to as many quilt shops as possible for shop hop. He deserves a special husband award for doing that!

Last fall I was struggling to make items for my tierneycreates Etsy shop and work my full-time health care job. On a whim I asked Terry: “would you be interested in learning how to quilt and helping me with simple piecing/sewing on quilts and other projects?”  Terry replied, “sure, I can do that.”  He proceeded to “do that”, Terry patiently learned, from his wife, basic sewing machine operation, machine sewing and simple piecing. The plan was to also enroll him in a beginning quilting class but the class he was enrolled got cancelled.

Terry has progressed in his sewing abilities and has become adept at basic straight piecing (sewing a straight edge to another straight edge) and is a natural with the terrifying tool – the rotary cutter (he has never sliced himself like I have). He has helped me on many projects, completing repetitive chain piecing projects and making the binding for my quilts.

His first completed quilt, a yummy log cabin flannel quilt, he gave to his Mom for her birthday as a surprise and she was quite pleased. He finally took his first quilt shop quilting class – on making t-shirt quilt.  Below is a photo of his first t-shirt quilt which made from his collection of brewery and beer enjoyment themed t-shirts.

Brewery & beer themed T-shirt Quilt pieced by Terry Hogan, quilted by Betty Anne Guadalupe.

Luckily I do not see Terry becoming a fabric hoarder like myself, but he does have his own stash (primarily stocked with those dog prints he found over the years). Besides we have a small house and we have reached our limit of fabric!

He is interested in the future in designing quilts that men would enjoy (and women who enjoy simple cozy comfort) made from flannel and denim. His favorite quilt is a quilt I made him in my early days of quilting which is very worn (and not very well constructed, ha) and made from flannel shirt material and denim.