Peg Dougherty has made more than 500 quilts through the years. At 78, she has no plans to quit.
“I’ll quilt until I can’t bend my fingers,” said Dougherty, of Pylesville. “I told my kids that if I ever end up in a nursing home, just give me a box of scraps, a needle and thread and forget about me.”
Why stop? She’s an award-winning crafter whose quilts have earned national acclaim, toured the country in exhibits, helped warm the homeless and sold for sometimes hefty sums. One buyer offered $2,000 for a king-sized scrap quilt. Dougherty gave it thought.
“Make it $1,700 and we’ve got a deal,” she said.
Most of her quilts are gifts for family, friends and fundraisers. Birds, trees and flowers are her trademark motifs, though, for her mother-in-law, she stitched one to look like a crossword puzzle bearing the names of loved ones. Another quilt, she made from a pair of old denim jeans.
“I liked quilting, right off the bat,” said Dougherty, whose first effort was a wedding gift for her daughter. “Quilting appeals to both sides of your brain. As a retired science teacher, I’m mathematically inclined, but there’s an artistic side to me, too. I enjoy the creativity; it’s like painting with fabric.”
Americans have been quilting since Colonial times; the craft’s origins are unknown, though it’s believed to have started thousands of years ago in Egypt or Asia. In the U.S., quilting took off in the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, slumped after World War II and bounced back with the advent of Earth Day in 1970.
In 2021, there were 10 to 12 million quilters in North America, according to the Craft Industry Alliance, 99% of them women. Each spent an average of nearly $3,400 a year on supplies for a hobby that generated $35 billion in annual sales.
Many, like Dougherty, belong to groups of like-minded artisans (hers is the On The Line Quilt Guild, in Pylesville), where they meet regularly to share know-how and often donate their works to charities.
On quilting days, Dougherty may toil in her studio for hours, eyes and fingers working in sync to the sounds of country hits from Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson.
“I’ll get engrossed in a quilt, lose track of time and [stitch] from 10 a.m. until dinner, unless the dogs remind me that it’s time to go out,” she said.
Not all quilts are perfect but “I’ve learned not to stress out over mistakes; they can become ‘design elements,’ ” she said. “Most quilters are their own worst critics; something you think is a glaring error, others will seldom notice.”
Dougherty has her own rule of thumb: “If you can’t see the mistake from a galloping horse, it’s good.”
Quilting a memory
Sometimes quilts can make you cry. When her cousin’s daughter died, at 23, Jeanne Kehl crafted one from the garments the young woman had worn over the years: baby clothes, sleepers, velvet dresses and the like.
“It took four years to make that [king-sized] memorial quilt; it was a chronicle of the girl’s life,” said Kehl, 69, of Jarrettsville. Tears were shed during the gifting.
Other quilts, she has finished for crafters who passed away before completing them. While stitching those textiles, Kehl said, “I almost feel as if the [deceased] is there beside me, and that I’m keeping their memory alive. To me, quilts have a lot of love in them.”
In 25 years, she has turned out about 400 quilts, one of which was named grand champion of the Harford County Farm Fair in 2010.
Though she buys most of her fabrics, “you can make a quilt out of anything,” Kehl said. Scraps of an old wedding dress produced one quilt; another, she made from the equestrian ribbons that her niece had won at horse shows.
Kehl also rescues tattered old quilts and restores them. One that she found was 80 years old and made of cloth diapers. Undeterred, she shopped around and found a diaper match.
“You’re always searching for the perfect material to fit the pattern that you imagine in your head,” she said. Her fabric “finds” include those that picture everything from goldfish to fairies to dragonflies.
The largest quilt Kehl has made would cover a wall; the smallest was just 10-by-20 inches, a “portrait” quilt made from a scenic snapshot she took on a cruise in Alaska.
Currently, she’s crafting four quilts, all in different phases of production.
“It’s hard for me to watch TV and not do something with my hands,” she said. “I’ve always liked to sew. If I’m sewing when someone phones, they think I’m half asleep. There’s a tranquility [about quilting]; it puts you in a zone.”
A creative outlet
Men quilt, too. For eight years, Dick Travis has practiced the pastime, leaving his mark on a craft dominated by women. His wife, Cheryl, may have nudged him into quilting, but now Dick Travis is hooked.
“Everyone needs to express themselves creatively, whether in music, sports or this,” said the 76-year-old Bel Air resident. “I get to make things that I feel good about.”
For years, Cheryl Travis, 68, a longtime artisan, coaxed her husband to attend quilt shows around the country with her. Then it dawned on him: he could do this, too.
“After watching her quilt for 35 years, I needed to put that knowledge to use,” he said.
A retired Army major, Travis has crafted dozens of bright and colorful quilts, many with geometric designs. The couple go to quilting bees together, where crafters sit and talk and bind fabrics. Often, he is the only man there.
“During lectures at our meetings [of the Flying Geese Quilt Guild in Bel Air], Dick will hold up the quilts for the speakers,” his wife said. “The women have been very accepting [of him]. ”
And vice-versa.
“If you enjoy doing stuff with people, you stick with it,” he said.
Travis’ hobby has passed muster with military friends. Veterans are the recipients of a number of the guild’s offerings, and one that he helped make went to a vet battling cancer.
Sewing in tandem has brought the couple, married 44 years, even closer.
“It gives us time to talk to each other,” Cheryl Travis said. “Our communication skills improve, and there’s the joy of being with the person you love.”
To that end, they plan to make a king-sized quilt for their own bed — and they will do it together.
Telling a story
Many quilters find their calling after dabbling in other needlecrafts — be it embroidery, knitting or cross-stitch. Gyleen Fitzgerald took a different track: She turned to quilting after designing outerwear, for the Army, to combat chemical warfare.
For 33 years, Fitzgerald, 65, worked at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, creating masks, suits and hoods to counter weapons of mass destruction. A chemical engineer, the Havre de Grace resident soon found happier uses for fabric, and her quilting career took off.
Fitzgerald has sewn more than 500 quilts, won regional shows, penned 14 books on her craft and lectured throughout the U.S. and the Netherlands.
She has authored two children’s books: “The Dream,” a parody of “The Wizard of Oz,” in which Dorothy was a quilter’s daughter instead of a farm girl; and “In Search of Dragon Eggs,” a 14th-century fantasy filled with knights and magical creatures. Each book features illustrations of a quilt, made by Fitzgerald, which chronicles the tale in its fabric “so that you can read the quilt and follow the story.”
Clearly, quilting offers her a lens into the unexplored.
“I design each quilt as I go,” she said. “A lot of quilters will sketch out their whole project before embarking on it. I start with a concept, period; I do one block [of fabric], see how it flies and go on from there.
“The challenge of the unknown floats my boat.”
