“I got first place on that in a fair when I lived in North California. I could have taken it to Sacramento to put it in the [statewide] competition, but I didn’t want to drive all the way!” says Janet “Jan” Heiling about one of her many quilts. She is currently a resident at Whitewood Gardens, an assisted living facility in SE Portland. Heiling is a retired computer programmer who has been living there for the past year and a half. She has been making quilts for many years and has been sewing since her mother taught her in elementary school. In addition to the arts of quilting and sewing, she draws and paints.
The hallway of Whitewood Gardens is lined with quilts, vests, and paintings. Heiling’s quilts are made with bright cloth and embellished with gems and pompoms. This also aligns with her vests, which are made out of fabrics of a variety of colors and textures. Her pieces add a colorful and vibrant touch to the hall.
Heiling explains the process of making a vest. “I took scraps of stuff … I went around, got what I could get and made a vest. They’re fun and they’re easy to make.” Her vests are vivid, and one even has a pin a friend made to match it. Another has intricate threading in the shape of leaves that she hand-sewed individually to accentuate the autumn theme. While she enjoys vests, most of the hallway and her room are covered in quilts.
Each quilt she makes has a story. A favorite of hers is a complex image of Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. It’s a collage of fabric made with various patterns and colors that come together, creating a beautiful scene that won second place in a quilting contest.
The next to catch my eye is a quilt of a tree in the snow. Heiling and her friends each made their own versions of the same quilt from a pattern, and then hired outside quilters to join the patterned pieces with filling and backings. These quilters specialize in artistic stitching to add texture and patterns to quilts. Heiling’s quilt is accented by rhinestones attached throughout, which resemble sparkling snowflakes, and quilting made to look like bark, branches, and falling snow.
She shows me her favorite quilt, made out of a fabric from Egypt. It is framed in black and features a woman’s side profile. “It took me a long time to figure out how to quilt it,” she explains, adding, “I come in the door and I look, and she’s just so beautiful.” She points to where it’s placed, the first thing she sees when she enters her room.
It’s far from the only quilt in the room, where no wall is bare. She shows me table runners, wall hangings, and a blanket she made for her late husband. It’s adorned with instruments and music notes, in honor of his love of song. “I made this for Christmas because he was very good at music … I had some music [fabric] so I made a music quilt for him.”
Heiling has sold her quilts to friends before, sometimes making the same quilt three times if multiple people like it. However, her quilts are mostly gifts. Her next project is going to be a table runner for her sister-in-law, who’s a big fan of the one Heiling has in her room and wants something similar. Currently, Heiling can’t sew due to an injury, however she is excited to get back to it.
She’s quilted for contests and friends, but so many of her quilts come purely from the fact that she loves to make them. “You see something, you say ‘Ohh!’ and then you go and do it.” To her, the biggest challenge isn’t making or envisioning the quilt, rather it is finding the materials to fit her vision.
