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Paula Webster: The Trick Worked

Paula Webster explains that she was tricked into quilting. A friend from her knitting group who also quilted made her an offer straight out of The Godfather: an offer she could not refuse.

Her friend, Susan Nygard, asked if Paula would consider making a quilt if there were a place she could get the fabric and the instructions free. Paula asked where that place would be. The answer was simple: at Nygard’s house.

Now, some two years and 20 quilts later, one of the quilts that Paula has made is being raffled as a benefit for the Ivoryton Library. Raffles tickets for the quilt, available at the Ivoryton Library, are $5 apiece or five for $20. Tickets will be on sale at the library through the summer until Thursday, Sept. 1.

The quilt, a traditional pattern known as an Ohio Star, is currently on display at the library.

Paula, who lives in Deep River, donated the quilt to the Ivoryton Library not only because it is where her quilting group meets, but also because of how critical she believes libraries are.

“Libraries are wonderful; they are important. You can get valuable, accurate, reliable information at the library in contrast to the Internet,” she says. “They are a heritage here in New England.”

She was surprised when she visited her daughter who lives in the Southwest and she asked where the local library was.

“She told me that this was not New England and not every town had a library,” Paula recalls.

Paula’s first quilt was small, an 18-inch by 25-inch lap quilt. Making it was difficult. “I thought I would never quilt again,” she says.

But then came the unexpected: COVID. With lockdowns and precautions, Paula, a purchasing agent for a local manufacturer, had time on her hands. She wanted to keep busy.

She needed more than the knitting that she learned as child, first as a youngster knitting dresses for her Barbie doll and, more recently, making socks. In fact, she describes herself as a sock specialist.

“My adult children live out of state and only so many socks you can knit,” she explains.

Despite her initial reluctance, she tried a second quilt and then another and yet another. “I guess you could say I am obsessed,” she admits. “But I do not quilt obsessively.”

By that she means that when she has a problem with design or construction, she will put the quilt aside, until, as she puts it, she finds her muse again.

She started out with smaller quilts but has now made eight that are bed sized.

Paula gets the patterns for her quilts in books, online, or by creating them herself. Sometimes, she says, the fabric inspires the pattern and sometimes it is just the reverse, the pattern determines fabric selection. She lays out the squares before sewing them.

Her quilts, she notes, do not require complicated stitching. Piecing them together just demands sewing straight lines.

“You can find your grandmother’s old sewing machine and do this,” she says.

Still, things do not always go smoothly.

“I do have a seam ripper,” she says.

Paula creates the patterned top of the quilt, but she points out that finished piece actually consists of three different layers. In addition to the patterned top, there is the batting which makes the middle layer and then the backing.

After she has pieced together the top, she gives it to a quilter experienced in the assembly and stitching of the final product. She has used two local quilters for this part of the process, Patty Doak and Kathy Beaulieu. Doak did the work on the Ivoryton Library quilt.

At the moment, Paula is working on a colorful quilt for the young son of one of the materials suppliers she works with in a pattern called a Disappearing Nine Patch. She expects that this child’s quilt will get some rough and tumble usage.

“I know it’s going to get thrown on the floor,” she says.

In general, however, Paula hopes that the people to whom she has given quilts treat them carefully, respecting the work that has gone into their production. One of the things that gives her pause as she thinks about the recipients is the damage that dog and cat claws can do.

“Claws are not kind to quilts,” she says.

Saying goodbye to a quilt can be a difficult moment for the sewer who has worked long and hard on creating it.

“Giving them up can be hard,” she admits. “Every quilt has memories for the maker.”

The memories, however, do not end with the creator.

“The recipients don’t know your memories,” she says. “They make their own memories.

Handmade Quilt Raffle to Benefit the Ivoryton Library

Tickets $5 each or five for $20.

Tickets are on sale at the Ivoryton Library until Thursday, Sept. 1

The quilt is now on display at the Ivoryton Library.