Bismarck Tribune

By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG

Della Koski learned about quilting by watching her mother, but during most of her years as a busy farm wife in the Wing area, she herself had no time to quilt.

But in the years since, she's made up for lost quilting time in a spectacular way.

"I always knew I was going to do this," she said. "When the time came, I was ready."

Her mother had the reputation in the area of making a blanket for every newborn baby in the area, and Koski became the graduation quilter: Since 1985, she's made 506 graduation quilts, she said.

But her current project is the largest single one she's tackled - running 21/2 years.

A family Koski knows, whose mother had died, asked her to make quilts out of their mother's clothes.

"She had a lot of clothes," Koski said.

Over the past couple of years, in her Bismarck home, Koski has put together 110 quilt tops from the fabrics.

Four sewing machines line up along a sunny east window, including a Bernina and two slim black antiques, a Singer she found at an auction for $10, and a Spartan, her first machine. She has two more sewing machines loaned out, she said.

The Bernina can do decorative stitches and a walking stitch for bindings, the Spartan works well to sew polyester, and it's handy to have different thread in each machine to avoid the time-consuming chore of changing thread colors, Koski said.

A heavy wooden 70-by-90-inch table in the living room makes it possible for her to lay out big areas of quilt blocks to work on, she said; boxes of fabric are stacked neatly in her garage, and quilts in various stages of completion are layered in both bedrooms.

Koski's quilt corners are perfectly matched, and each finished quilt is neatly bound and either quilted or tied with yarn. The patchwork patterns include variations on classics, such as "Trip Around the World" and "Nine-Patch," diagonal designs, square-within-a-square and larger windowpane blocks.

Koski said she likes quilting, and she likes the idea of recycling fabric in this way, reminiscent of the quilting of the 1930s, hard times when people used everything and threw nothing away.

Quilting involves more than stitching, Koski said. Designs must be chosen, fabric amounts calculated, and colors arranged. To make quilts of recycled fabrics, garments must be washed, taken apart at the seams, pressed and cut into blocks. Koski will use everything down to as small as a 2-inch block, she said.

Between learning from watching her mother and taking a few classes, Koski has developed her techniques - chain-sewing blocks, templates for cutting and a choice of rotary cutters in place of scissors.

The family whose mother's clothes she created all these quilts from have chosen the ones they want for themselves, Koski said. She has completed their quilts; the others remain as tops ready to be finished.

She's already been asked by other families to do similar projects. So for the foreseeable future, Koski will be busy.

Looking at her supply of fabric, people have jokingly told Koski she can't die until she uses it all up.

Right now, it's looking like she'll live forever, she said.