Christianne Dettmann
Last month the SaddleBrooke Sunrise Rotary Club spotlighted one of its newer members, David Dettmann, who happens to be my incredible dad! The article mentioned the 30-plus quilts he donated to the club so they can be sold to support local charities. This month, we share the story of how these quilts came to be, hoping perhaps you will decide to make one (or more) of them part of your story, too!
My folks retired to SaddleBrooke nearly 20 years ago. One of their house-hunting criteria was that it needed adequate space for my mom’s brand-new longarm quilting machine. Measuring roughly 5 feet wide, 14 feet long, and 7 feet tall, this was no easy task! But her gleaming “elephant in the room” soon found its home opposite the living room sofa, while the walls—much like a trellis—bloomed into a garden of beautifully colored thread organized across rows upon rows of wall-hung racks. Likewise, the closets burst with a bounty of soft batting and a forest of fine fabrics, fat quarters, quilt kits, and jelly rolls.
With hopes of starting a small business, my mom pieced patterns that spoke to her, while my dad, the engineer, focused on keeping the machine in tip-top shape. Though she had sewn her whole life, my mom began taking quilting classes at a local sewing store. However, she soon developed hip problems, such that my dad would often drive her to class and wait in the back to take her home. It didn’t take long for him to start learning some tips and tricks by osmosis, until soon they were working together on a variety of quilts, just for the fun of trying new techniques. Mom tended to favor putting blocks together, while Dad became the primary operator of the longarm machine.