Quilter of the Month
A1 Quilting Machine
s Salutes Betty Davis
Have you ever wanted to give yourself a really great gift? That is exactly what our featured quilter, Betty Davis, did for her 80th birthday. She boarded a bus with fellow quilters and went to The International Quilt Festival 2007, in Houston, TX. Betty was looking for a longarm machine and left with an order in her purse for an A1 923 Elite!
Let us tell you a little more. Betty has been a traveler, teacher, homemaker, business owner, and realtor, each in its own time. Betty is fearless and enjoys a challenge. At seventy, she learned to ski, and loves it.
Six years ago in the middle of the night, Betty lost the sight in one eye due to a ski injury. With no hope of continuing another of her loves, backpacking, she used her travel pictures to make a quilt. Enlarging her photos, transferring them to cloth and by morning Betty had preserved memories of her life over the past 15 years into a quilt. There have been hundreds of quilts since as she practiced many different techniques. Betty gifted her children and their children with her quilts. She sent quilts to wounded soldiers, to hospital preemies, to friends who needed a lift, and she still has a closet full of quilts.
Twenty years ago, newly widowed, Betty sold her home and business in Missouri and made Fort Worth, TX her new home. For nine months each year, she taught reading education in the public schools. During the other three months, Betty traveled the world. Retirement just meant longer trips. Traveling through South America, Peru, the Galapagos, Australia and the world, Betty formed deep friendships with other travelers and people of all the countries she visited.
This nomadic life was very different from her young years. Betty and her three brothers lived in only one house as they grew up in Kansas. Her father was an engineer with the railroad, her mother a homemaker who sewed clothes, not quilts.
Betty worked as a secretary until she married. When her children went to school, so did Betty. She went to college where she finished with a DWD, Doctorate without Dissertation. "I wanted to do it right so my students would be successful," she says. Betty taught Reading Education in all grades. She opened her own clinic for teaching and diagnostic work and co-owned a real estate agency in the Kansas City area.
Spontaneity is central to Betty's life. Not much planning, it just happens. On a Sunday afternoon when Betty decided she needed a new sewing machine, a Pfaff dealer opened his doors to sell Betty her Pfaff Quilt Expression machine. Dealers, Sandy & Gerald Heinrich, sales contract in hand, raced with her while finalizing her sale, so she wouldn't miss her departing bus from the Houston quilt show.
Today, Betty is passionate about quilting! S he spends much of her time in retreats pursuing the excellence she desires. Her mentors are her fellow Letitbee Quilters, Donna and Judith, who helped her learn how to float quilts, work with various threads and tension issues, (they also recommended she look at the A1 Longarm). Jamie Wallen and Renae Haddadin, longarm educators, inspire her to create the masterpieces she seeks. For those of us who have the privilege of knowing Betty, we know there will be many masterpieces in her future.
Bravo Betty! A1 Quilting Machines salutes you!