Introducing Marla Hattabaugh of Scottsdale

 

Quilting is one of my main obsessions/passions.   It provides me with friends, laughing, visual stimulation, travel opportunities, as well as “alone time.“   Sometimes the challenge of getting the top to lay smooth regardless of how many seams come together is a great problem; other times, everything goes together so smoothly that the thirty years I've spent doing it seem warranted!
 
My grandmother/mother were sewers, so it followed that I would be, also.   Grandmother especially was very frugal due to raising two children as a single mother during the depression.  She saved scraps as if they were made of gold.   I always knew someday I'd make a quilt.   My mother's patience in garment construction was a major factor in helping me to be able to piece intricate sections.

I was born in Ohio and raised in Southern California where we moved when I was two years old.   Quilts were not part of my growing up, but when my mother gave me a kit from a friend and my husband said I'd never finish it, the die was cast.   Then I had to take a class from Laurene Sinema, where I mis-pieced the Ohio Star block and never did finish that pillow!   She suggested I join Arizona Quilters Guild, so I did.   It wasn't long before I was on the Board - as Membership Chairman, when we had 3x5 cards as our list!   Eventually, I was President and then out....   A good run and some accomplishments that still make me proud.

In l986, Willene Smith said she'd never talk to me again if I didn't enter the Great American Quilt Contest, honoring the restoration of the Statue of Liberty.  To make a long story short, my piece won from the State of Arizona and I got to go to New York for the opening ceremony and festivities.  I also met Nancy Crow at that time and decided to take a class with her at her farm near Columbus, Ohio.   We hit it off pretty well and I've learned a lot from her.  I started doing her quilting in l986.   My name is mentioned in her books/lectures.

Re:  giraffes....   I love their skin texture and height.   Being somewhat vertically challenged, I look up to them and admire their grace and the patterns on their bodies.   At first, fabric with giraffes was added to the blocks I made.  Soon Nancy told me that was trite.   One day, I thought I'd make the whole quilt a giraffe!!  So there!  Now, there's a long series of giraffe quilts - usually quite abstract, some more successful than others.

Around l989, I was asked to be a work scholarship student at Quilt/Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio.  Wow!  What an opportunity to meet quiltmakers from all over the country/world.   I've been every year and helped with organizing and running the event.  Don't ask me to do much in June because I'll be in Ohio!   Teachers have provided me with surface design knowledge that helps make my fabric unique and unusual.  My workroom and patio are set up for dyeing, screen printing, deconstructing, painting, and sewing.   It is a pleasure to go in there and know I have everything I need to make a quilt from beginning to end.