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Show Work of Champion Quilt Maker Is a Challenge to All Sewers By CHERIE NICHOLAS . 4,1 mpLii lit, iiuiiiii4iJJi----.-?5' , . ; - I ,A Y-Y ax L ; - - ' -fv , : - . ;r . -;w, t - - . -t -g I s f " A - ' ' t 1 "-, U V S - - jv - f ' : - r v $ QUILTING has been an important part of the fashion scene for many weeks now, with accessories, jackets, coat linings and even skirts made warm as well as attractive by the quilting technique. Home sewers, with a tremendous quantity of quilted fabrics available by the yard, have been having fun turning out their own quilted creations. Of course, you may not want to tackle anything so ambitious right away, but the quilt illustrated in the above picture gives you an idea of what can be done by one who makes quilting her hobby. An illness ill-ness which, ten years ago, confined her to her home for many weeks, has brought to Mrs. Bertha Stenge of Chicago national recognition as champion quilt maker. While she was idle and unable to carry on her usual activities of caring car-ing for her home and her flower garden, Mrs. Stenge noticed a Chicago Chi-cago newspaper was promoting a quilt-making contest. She decided to enter the contest, just to get started on a hobby and keep herself occupied. She did not win a prize in this contest, but the quilt she entered won a prize at- a later contest and since that time she has made 20 . quilts, all of which have won cash awards and blue ribbons throughout the country. Mrs. Stenge has won nearly 40 prizes in her ten years of entering contests. She has never sold any of her quilts although she has been requested many times to place a sales price on one or another of them. She says she cannot evaluate evalu-ate in dollars and cents the six months or more of effort it takes to make a quilt. Her Bible quilt has won repeated awards in various contests. In this design, she has pictured incidents of the Bible Moses in the bulrushes, bul-rushes, Daniel in the lion's den, Jonah Jo-nah and the whale and others. Still another unusual design is her Fam- ily History quilt. From old portraits, por-traits, Mrs. Stenge worked into the design, pictures of her father and mother, herself as she started to school, her husband and her daughters, daugh-ters, as well as incidents of her married life. In the above illustration illustra-tion Mrs. Stenge is displaying a portion of the Family History quilt and the original photographs. The insets show other motifs from Mrs. Stenge' s quilts. Her top honor up to this year was $750 won at the New York World's fair. Recently, she won the regional region-al contest of $100 and the sweepstakes sweep-stakes prize of $1,000 in a national needlework contest conducted by Woman's Day magazine. Mrs. Stenge has won state prizes in Kentucky, home of the appli-qued appli-qued quilt and where fine quilt making mak-ing is taken as a matter of course. She has won top honors in state, county and city contests in Illinois and just to prove she has abilities in other directions, one year at the Cook County fair she won three baking bak-ing prizes as well as four quilt prizes. The quilt which won her the sweepstakes prize in the Woman's Day contest was a Victory quilt, an original design. It has a shield outlined out-lined in blue and appliqued with white stars around an American eagle ea-gle in blue, with the Liberty Bell in blue above it. Red Vs are placed at each corner with the Victory sign three dots and a dash beside each V. Blue stars are used as a border around the quilt. An alphabet quilt for a child's bed is another consistent prize winner. And now she is working on a "quilt of quilts." This will display miniature minia-ture replicas of standard and famous fa-mous quilt patterns. Mrs. Stenge is a graduate of the University of California, where she majored in art. Her husband is an attorney. They have three daughters daugh-ters and two grand-daughters. Released by Western Newspaper Union. |