Barn Blast 8/19/11 – Meet Ethel White, One of Our Fabulous Education Coordinators

Ethel teaching at “University Days – 2010″

Ethel White became consumed with quilting when she attended the Gee’s Bend show at the Milwaukee Art Museum several years ago. Growing up, she’d seen her mother, grandmother and aunts assemble quilts using the Montgomery Ward’s Catalogue for foundation piecing, but it wasn’t until she saw the Gee’s Bend quilts made of scrap denim that she became determined to become a quilter herself.

A self-taught quilter, she traveled to several branches of the Milwaukee Public Library, checking out every book about quilting that she could get her hands on. One day, a security guard at the Center Street Library tipped her off to a quilting group that met twice a month there, so she started attending their meetings.

Ethel was already an experienced tailor and seamstress. She trained at MATC, and ran her own custom clothing shop, “Ethel Monday’s Fashion Boutique,” for a decade.

Her first quilted masterpiece was an appliqué quilt honoring the Gee’s Bend quilters that she called “The Village.” During her first year as a quilter, she completed 35 quilts! She has made every type of quilt, but her favorites are “scrappy quilts” and those using African kente cloth.

In 2006, her friend Maggie Gordon asked her to show her work at the new Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts. Her classes in foundation piecing have become a staple at University Days.

Ethel works hard with Moey Anderson to create an interesting array of classes and lectures for the WMQFA. If you have ideas for classes you’d like to see offered at the museum, contact her at Adults@wiquiltmuseum.com.