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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Front & Center: Retired physician Judy Bell stitches a new passion

Retired physician Judy Bell has discovered her creative side after a professional life of medicine. (Michael Guilfoil / The Spokesman-Review)
Michael Guilfoil Correspondent

As a family doc, Sandpoint resident Judy Bell spent her whole career “being very technical, very scientific, very linear,” she says.

Upon retiring, she took up quilting, and “in the last five years, I’ve discovered a part of my brain I didn’t know I had – an artistic and creative side I never had a chance to use when I was working with patients.”

Bell is the featured artist at next weekend’s 37th annual Quilt Show, sponsored by Washington State Quilters.

She will discuss modern quilt designs each afternoon from 1:15 to 2:15. Other speaker topics include “graffiti doodling,” how to make a perfect ¼-inch seam, and fabrics and colors that jazz up a quilt.

During a recent interview, Bell talked about the evolution of quilting, why modern patterns appeal to her, and what Japan and “Little House on the Prairie” have in common.

S-R: Where did you grow up?

Bell: In a little town in Michigan – Hillsdale.

S-R: What were your interests back then?

Bell: I liked science, and I played clarinet in the orchestra.

S-R: Did you envision a particular career?

Bell: My parents grew up quite poor in West Virginia. I was the first person in my family to even contemplate college, so it was hard to think about an actual career. I didn’t have any problem academically, but financially college was a stretch.

S-R: Where did you attend?

Bell: Kalamazoo College. After graduating and working for a year or two, I applied to medical school and was accepted at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

S-R: Did you pursue a specialty?

Bell: I was a family practice physician. I worked in the San Jose area for about 20 years with Kaiser Permanente, a prepay medical group in California.

S-R: What was your introduction to quilting?

Bell: One of my grandmothers back in the hills of West Virginia was a quilter. Both of her sons were in World War II, and she made red, white and blue quilts for each of them to commemorate that. One of those is the only one I have that’s been passed down through the family.

S-R: When did you start quilting?

Bell: I took home ec in high school, and made two quilts out of corduroy – one for my best friend and one for me.

S-R: Do you still have it?

Bell: I do. (laugh) Hidden away.

S-R: How did your interest in quilts progress from there?

Bell: Not long after, during those hippie days – you know, back to nature, back to the farm – quilts always seemed to be in the background. I was so busy working that I didn’t think about making one myself, but I was around people who collected them. I remember going to quilt museums in Vermont 30 or 40 years ago. And when we traveled to Europe, we always looked around for quilts. I had a whole stack of them at home.

S-R: When did you start making quilts?

Bell: Not until I retired. We’d visited friends in Sandpoint off and on for years, and finally decided in 2001 to migrate up here. So we bought a house and I worked part time. When I retired in 2006, I had to figure out what to do with myself. I tried stained glass, jewelry and a few other crafts, but none of them stuck. After the birth of a niece, I decided to make a quilt, and I was hooked.

S-R: That was only your third quilt, after making two in high school. How did it turn out?

Bell: Actually very nice. It’s what’s called a split-rail pattern. But once I had a top, I didn’t know how to quilt it – add batting material and backing. Traditionally that was done by hand with the fabric stretched in big hoops. Wandering around a Spokane quilt shop, I happened upon what’s called a long-arm quilting machine – basically a sewing machine mounted on a big frame. And I thought, “This is really cool.” So I took some classes and eventually bought one.

S-R: How much do they cost?

Bell: Home models are around $6,000 or $7,000. Professional ones cost anywhere from $30,000 to $80,000, and are computerized.

S-R: Are there people who don’t consider machine quilting authentic?

Bell: There’s no question that 20 years ago there was a lot of concern among purists – if you don’t quilt it by hand, you might as well not bother. But that’s less so today. If you hand-quilt, you make one quilt a year. It’s lovely, but very laborious.

S-R: How did you get past the novice quilter stage?

Bell: I spent a lot of time watching videos online and reading books – teaching myself.

S-R: What’s the best quilting advice you picked up?

Bell: “There are no rules.”

S-R: How many quilts have you made?

Bell: Probably 50. I give them away as gifts or keep them.

S-R: If you were to sell them, have you ever calculated what your time would be worth?

Bell: I knew what my time was worth when I was a doctor. But if you were to pay someone by the hour to make a quilt, few people could afford one. The first thing someone asks when I pull out a quilt is, “How long did it take you to make?” That’s a question I don’t want to think about, because it took too damn long.

S-R: Do you find quilting challenging, tedious, boring?

Bell: With each quilt I try something that I haven’t done before – teaching myself something new. Sometimes I may stand there stumped about which fabric to use or what color should go where, and think, “I never want to do this again.” But most of the time it’s my happy place – what I love to do.

S-R: Do you focus on quilting while you do it, or think about other things?

Bell: I think about classical music or Billy Joel or Elton John, because I like to have music on while I’m quilting. But I think about quilting and various patterns and what I’m going to do half the day, because it’s so fascinating to me. I spent my whole professional life being very technical, very scientific, very linear. And there’s a lot of that in quilting. You have to sew a seam and make one point come to another point. But what’s fun is that I can also ask myself, “Can I try this? What if I do that?” I couldn’t do that very much when I was in medicine.

S-R: What drew you to modern-style quilting?

Bell: Many women still want to reproduce quilts with patterns that have recognizable names. But I’m much more interested in the modern movement spurred by younger women and spread by blogs. It tends to be more abstract – more vibrant, no holds barred – than some of the traditional patterns. And more fun.

S-R: You mentioned “women.”

Bell: Well, it’s not exclusively women – probably 85 percent. But quite a few men display at the more professional level, teach classes and have Internet businesses.

S-R: You’ve traveled widely since retiring. Has exposure to fabric arts in countries such as Mozambique, Tanzania and Nepal influenced your own quilts?

Bell: Certainly. And also, while I’m there, it has given me a way to connect to the women in those countries. They may not quilt, but you can still immerse yourself in color and fabric.

S-R: Did the recession impact the quilting community?

Bell: No, the shows were still booming because so many women were getting to the age when they finally had time for quilting.

S-R: What countries are most enthusiastic about quilting?

Bell: One country where interest is growing is Japan. It already had a long tradition of handmade fabrics, but not patchwork quilts. Then the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” was syndicated in Japan about 15 years ago and became wildly popular. Because there were a lot of quilts in the show, reproducing this primitive American art form took over in Japan. Now, the Tokyo International Quilt Festival in January is the biggest quilt show in the world, with a whole section devoted to “Little House on the Prairie”-style quilts made by Japanese women.

S-R: What do you like most about quilting?

Bell: It’s a chance to make something that no one else has ever done in quite the same way. And when I’m done, I have something tactile that I can either give as a gift or use to keep my feet warm on a cold winter afternoon.

S-R: What do you like least?

Bell: It gets pretty tedious when you have to sew the same piece to the same piece 30 or 60 times. That’s when I crank up the rock music.

This interview has been edited and condensed. If you have suggestions for business or community leaders to profile, contact Michael Guilfoil via email at mguilfoil@comcast.net.