M'Annette Ruddell is seen with some of her colorful quilted wall hangings. (Photo by Carole Verona)

by Carole Verona

Back in what she calls the “hippie days,” M’Annette Ruddell, now 66, would often take the train up to New York and spend the day in Greenwich Village. One day she sauntered into a bookstore and found “The Perfect Patchwork Primer” by Beth Gutcheon. “That book had a huge impact on me,” she said. At home, she had scraps of cloth left over from making some of her own clothes. “I started cutting, sewing and making baby quilts for friends who were having children. Then I started shopping for new fabrics.  Fabrics in those days were what I call ‘Little House on the Prairie’ — calico, small flowers, horrible shades of yellow with red. There were not a lot of lovely fabric choices, but I persisted,” she said.

It took many years, but M’Annette’s persistence led to her first one-woman show at Malelani Café, 6734 Germantown Avenue in Mt. Airy. On exhibit through the month of March are M’Annette’s original handmade quilted wall hangings, perfect for display in a home or office. All pieces are for sale, with prices ranging from $25 to $200.

M’Annette doesn’t know how many quilts she has made over the years because most of them have been given as gifts or donated to non-profit organizations to be auctioned or raffled off. She also takes commissions for custom-made projects.

“Quilting has been one of my major creative outlets,” said M’Annette, who also knits and has sung with Singing City for 40 years. “I don’t have the skills to be a painter, but I love taking people’s designs and rearranging them. Some people think it’s weird to cut up perfectly good cloth and rearrange it, but that’s what gives me a lot of pleasure.”

M’Annette mentioned that quilting is big business. It’s a $3.76 billion industry, according to a 2014 survey conducted by Quilting in America. In November, the annual International Quilt Festival in Houston drew almost 55,000 people from all over the world, who go to buy fabrics, gadgets and books. There is a huge online fabric business as well, which unfortunately has caused many shops to close, including one in Chestnut Hill.

M’Annette explained that there are trends in quilting, just like there are in fashion. “A few years ago, Civil War reproduction fabrics were really big. and the William Morris fabrics that I use in some of my quilts are actually reproductions of his 19th century designs,” she said.

Currently, M’Annette uses a lot of batik fabrics, which are mainly made in Indonesia. “They’re colorful, interesting designs, and I appreciate the talent that goes into making that particular kind of hand-produced fabric. I also love big, bold modern prints.”

Quilt making is an intricate process that blends art and skill. M’Annette begins with looking at fabric and pulling pieces that go with each other. She calls this phase “auditioning the fabrics.” One block on a quilt might have from two to 16 fabrics in it. The next phase is to look at blocks to get ideas for your design. “As far as I know, every block that has been imagined has a name. Many are biblical, like Rose of Sharon or Jacob’s Ladder. Some are related to the expansion to the West, like Ohio Star or Road to Kansas.”

Although she was born in Philadelphia and has lived in West Mt. Airy for 40 years, M’Annette considers South Dakota as her home base. When she was only 18 months old, her parents, who worked for the American Friends Service Committee, were assigned to a university town on the edge of the Black Hills. That’s where she lived until she went to college in Michigan. After moving back to Philadelphia, she got a job with the same Quaker organization where her parents worked and spent her whole career there as a writer and editor in the fundraising-communications area.

In addition to quilting, M’Annette volunteers as a knitting instructor at Mt. Airy’s Interim House, a residential program for women in recovery. “Each resident gets her first knitting project in a cotton bag that I make. I’ve made 450 bags, which pleases me because it means 450 women have had the chance to learn to knit,” she said.

M’Annette is a member of the Liberty Bell Knitting Guild and the Wild Geese Quilters. “I was a solitary quilter for many years. One day during a break at choir rehearsal, I pulled out a quilt that I was working on, and the woman sitting in front of me pulled out hers. She invited me to come to the next meeting of the Wild Geese Quilters and I’ve now been a member for 20 years. We do an outreach project every year, making baby quilts for St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.

“One of things I like best about my creative energy and output is the people I have met over the years and participate with in the Wild Geese Quilters and the Liberty Bell Knitting Guild. I just love these people. In our current culture, these two skills are very women-focused. I like that and appreciate the sharing that goes on.”

More information at 267-766-2396 or www.malelani.com or mruddell31@yahoo.com