KV Quilt Guild honor goes to Mabel Edington
Canda Harbaugh/The Western News Mabel Edington poses with a puffin-lined quilt she made for her son. Puffins are common in Alaska where he lives.
The content of Mabel Edington’s booth at this weekend’s Quilt Show will reveal that quilts are not solely made of cloth, batting and thread – but also of love.
Most of the countless quilts she has created throughout the decades she has given away to friends, to family members or to strangers going through a difficult time. She, herself, still has blankets her mother quilted and embroidered for her dolls, and a quilt her grandmother toiled over just for her.
“They are treasures,” she says.
Edington is humbled to be Kootenai Valley Quilt Guild’s Quilter of the Year. As the honored quilter, her booth will be the most visible at the guild’s annual Quilt Show at Asa Wood Elementary on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
As a tradition, Edington signed the back of the guild’s “Quilter of the Year” quilt – the 18th person to do so – and will award it to next year’s honored quilter.
Her quilt booth will show her progression – how she was molded as a quilter – by including the work of her mother and grandmother, as well as her very first quilt, which she began in 1970.
“It was a beautiful quilt of all the wrong fabric because I didn’t know what the rules were then,” she said.
She has become a precise and meticulous quilter over the years.
“When you are quilting, you need to use 100 percent cotton fabric because others stretch and do funny things,” she said. “It’s not a hard and fast rule, but purists use 100 percent cotton and they don’t stray.”
Because Edington gave away many of her quilts locally, she will be able to borrow them back to feature at her booth. Her latest creation is a quilt with puffins on it that she is finishing up to give to her son who lives in Alaska. It will also be at the Quilt Show.
Though Edington was a self-taught quilter, she came from a family that quilted, sewed, crocheted and embroidered.
“There’s a family history there,” she said. “The generation of my parents and grandparents all quilted.”
Though her mother was not fond of quilting, she made beautifully embroidered crafts, and taught Edington how to embroider at the age of 5. Her father, a Navy sailor, was the ship’s tailor, and her aunts and grandmother were talented quilters.
Edington is the head of the guild’s education committee, which holds four public education classes a year for beginners, as well as classes for guild members who want to learn something new and get better at their craft.