Cheney woman finds joy, niche in quilting

“A quilt will warm your body and comfort your soul.” – Author unknown
Carol MacQuarrie knows quilts. Having created hundreds of them and given most away, she knows well how a quilt from the hand and heart can warm and comfort friends and family, whether to celebrate a joyous occasion or to wrap oneself in when facing adversity.
MacQuarrie, 61, a third-generation Cheney resident (a descendant of the McMillans and Owens farming families), has a home on 15 acres a few miles outside of the city that is filled with her work – mostly original designs that she pieced and then put together (which is where the quilting comes in).
She has also created quilted jackets, purses, draperies, furniture covers and other items. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve quilted the whole house,” she said.
She is well-known among her friends in the Cheney Frayed Edges quilting group for her exquisite machine-quilted patterns. Several years ago she purchased a long-arm quilting machine that enables her to essentially draw with thread.
The sewing arm is attached to rollers, which allows her to move it with free motion over the three layers she assembles into a finished quilt. “I’m not an artist, but I can draw better with thread than I can with a pen,” she said.
She never knows just how she will quilt a piece – with stitched hearts or geometric shapes or other patterns. “I often get the pattern idea from the quilt itself,” MacQuarrie said. “It just seems to flow from the work.”
Her “Carol’s Garden” quilt, done largely in pinks using her own design, is enhanced with fabric patterns of flowers and vegetables which were underpinned with batting to give them dimension and then sewn down using her machine.
And her “September Sky” quilted jacket with its autumn colors and sequins down the front is probably the most elaborate of her creations. Among the quilts closest to her heart is the quilt with many vegetables in the pattern that she gave to a friend who was battling cancer. Her friend lost that battle, but MacQuarrie knew it was warming her body and comforting her soul during the struggle.
She also takes special joy in her quilting group, which consists of about 20 women from their late 30s to their 70s who come together to work on quilting projects and to support one another – attorneys, nurses, retirees and more, from Medical Lake, Airway Heights, Spangle and Cheney.
“It’s amazing how it connects women from different walks of life and backgrounds and makes us all friends,” she said. “More than anything, that’s the important thing. How wonderful to get to know women and make friends. Quilting brings us together in a very nice way.”
Quilting has been with her the better part of her life. She remembers playing as a small child under the quilting frame at the Four Lakes church, where her own grandmother quilted so many years ago.
MacQuarrie has expanded her hobby to include machine-quilting tops that have been pieced by others. Many of these finished products are photographed and used as illustrations in quilting books written by Pam Mosler, a retired teacher from Dayton, Wash., who presents quilting classes across the country.
“I think we’re on the eighth book now,” said MacQuarrie, who has numerous ribbons and awards for her quilting work and has had quilts on display at Cheney’s Ben Franklin store.
Like so many women, she assumes many roles throughout the day. She starts work at Eastern Washington University, where she is a custodian, at 4 a.m. She’s home in time to make lunch for her husband, Harvey, who is retired but who still works a portion of the extended family’s 800-acre farm and drives a school bus, then she quilts or helps her mother or works in the garden where she propagates roses and grows a variety of fruits and vegetables, or tends the chickens. MacQuarrie is also a Master Gardener. Family – including children and grandchildren – live close by.
She’s never far from home or her needlework. “Why go anywhere else when my home is my Garden of Eden?” MacQuarrie asks.
Another anonymous saying comes to mind, and it sums up Carol MacQuarrie’s relationship with her own artwork – and life:
“Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.”