Stitched With Color: The Quilted Life of Cathy Cieglo

On color and piecing.

Cathy Cieglo, local artist and member of the Salt Valley Artists Collective is currently displaying some quilts in The 109 Cultural Exchange. She shared some thoughts and memories with me.

"I have been quilting or playing with fabric since home economics in the middle school. But then in 1974, I think, I bought a Kenmore sewing machine.

"I am addicted to color and fabrics. I don't do anything that's tricky. I just love to play with the color. So, I just started creating quilts and every single one of these (hanging in The 109) plus 2- or 300 more have all been done on that same Kenmore sewing machine that I thought in 1974.  

"I just love piecing. What I'm doing is like what I do in my collage work too, I like taking things apart and then putting it back together in a different way."

One Snow Day...

"When I went back to teaching, I thought, oh no, I can't quilt anymore. I don't have any time to quilt because I used to quilt all the time. And then there was a snow day at school, and I'm thinking, I can do anything. What should I do? And I went into my scrap pile. So every single piece of fabric in that quilt is from scraps in this little tub that I had. Every time I made a quilt, I put scraps in there, so I challenged myself to not cut into any new fabric pieces."

On Fabric...

"I'm drawn to color, and that's what makes me take out my wallet and buy fabrics. I have enough fabric to probably last if I lived to like 300 or 400 years old. I keep giving it away and donating it and still there’s so much."

"I'm so happy to have the opportunity to put these out. I've sold a number over the years, but it's hard too, because when you think about how many hours goes into it and the fabric and then the batting and the back fabric and then taking it to someone to quilt it or quilting it myself, the price just goes up. So I I have sold some quilts, but I also have a lot of quilts, too.

"That’s how I try to comfort someone or appreciate someone is by making them a quilt. So there's at least a couple hundred quilts out in the world I’ve made. And I’ve even made quilts like for the hurricane victims like Katrina. We had like a party at my house and friends just came up and we made about 15 or 20 quilts that we donated. It's been kind of a therapy for me too to just play with this fabric. That's a beautiful thing."