Boerne quilter much more than ‘sew-sew’

A local Boerne quilter added yet another first-place ribbon to her growing collection she has curated since she started the labor of love in 1994.

By the time Dianne Blalock took her first quilting class in 1994, she was already an “old pro” with a thread and needle, having found a passion in sewing from a very young age. In fact, Blalock would sew clothes not just for herself as a child but also for her sisters, mother and even her grandmother.

“When I was a young girl, I sewed for myself and my youngest sister and my mother eventually and even my grandmother, and I just loved sewing so much,” Blalock said. “It’s because if I had my way, I’d do that all day every day.”

In 1994, after years of experience sewing clothes, a fellow teacher working with Blalock in Portland, Texas, encouraged her to take a quilting class. Then, the thread of passion was woven, and Blalock has been quilting ever since.

After conquering quilting competitions around Texas, including cities like Portland and Beaumont, Blalock and her husband moved to Boerne a decade ago, and she quickly scouted out a local quilting guild as she had done when arriving in any new city.

Blalock located a quilting group in Kerrville, where her first-place, prize-winning “Starry Night” quilt pattern began, before she joined the Hill Country Quilting Guild, also located in Kerrville. While initially keeping it smalltown and local in Kerrville, Blalock’s Hill Country quilting experience left her in a sea of Brother sewing machines and her on a lone island using a Husqvarna Viking.

So, with nobody able to guide her on her machine, Blalock took to a class in the big city, San Antonio, to finish her starlit quilt. All of this effort led to Blalock taking home the first-place ribbon at the Hill Country Quilt Guild Show last weekend in the Other Techniques category.

Each of the nearly 30 stars that make up the quilt’s design – a growing and shrinking mixture of ambers, greens, cream and red setting in navy-night background – each were embroidered on a hoop and machine pieced together before all the pieces were joined with strips of ribbon on the back, making the quilt reversible.

This wasn’t the only ribbon Blalock took home that weekend.

In honor of the theme of this year’s guilt guild show, “Along the Silk Road,” Blalock also won an honorable mention in the themed quilt category for her “Venetian Window” quilt, which she named after one of the first stops on the silk road.

Both of the quilts were substantial in size, with her first-place winner measuring 105.5 inches long and 90 inches wide, and her silk road inspiration coming it at 73.5 inches long and 58 inches wide. These measurements and the level of detail in each quilt offers insight into the months of work Blalock said each quilt can take. However, nothing compares to the yearlong process of her hand quilting days, which she gave up to conquer more quilting projects.

“With as many projects I want to get done in my life, I decided I better not hand quilt anymore,” Blalock said with a laugh.

Completing more projects is exactly what Blalock said she and her quilting counterparts were able to accomplish when the COVID-19 pandemic left doors shuttered and individuals spending more time at home.

With quilt shows typically occurring every two years, Blalock said typically she has something to submit. However, the Kerrville guild’s show was canceled last year because of the pandemic, so she said several participants had “COVID quilts” completed in the downtime to compete with this year. Lots of UFOs were completed this year, which Blalock clarified was an insider industry term for unfinished objects in the local quilting community.

In her decades of quilting, Blalock said she has filled a box of ribbons for her work submitted across Texas, which one can imagine easily will continue to grow, and she continues to sew clothes, toys and other items for her grandchildren, keeping her Husqvarna Viking buzzing as often as she can. But don’t ask her which project she’s most proud of because she puts them on par with picking a favorite child.

“I’m really proud of anything I ever finish,” Blalock said. “When I find a pattern I really love and find the right fabric for it and feel like I’ve done a good job on it, they’re all like my babies. I can’t just pick one that I love. I have a hard time parting with any quilt I’ve ever made. When I give it to someone like my grandkids or any of my children, when they really like it or I get lets of compliments on them, it just makes me feel proud.”