Woman turns hobby into career
By Barbara Gartman
Monitor Staff Writer
MABANK–Quilting is as old as our nation and even older, as housewives sewed scraps of material together, often from worn out clothing, to make a coverlet over a warm padded filling.
Mabank resident Dee Oliver learned to quilt as a very young girl and then took it up again as a grown woman, approximately 30 years ago.
“I learned to quilt at my grandmother’s knee in Wetumka, Okla.” she said.
“Grandmother lived about a quarter of a mile from our house,” she said, adding she would run to her grandmother’s house every chance she got.
She moved to Texas in the mid-80s, and has been here ever since.
Dee and her husband, Tommy Willis Oliver, have been married six years.
Oliver has developed her own method of quilting, allowing her to finish a quilt a lot faster than the more traditional way.
When asked to recall her most special quilt, she responded quickly, “They are all special.”
However, some are unique in her memory.
“I made three quilts for Alene Gibbs, using her late husband’s neckties,” she said.
“Then for Andrea (Pickens), I made a quilt from ties she collected from senators.
Another woman who lost her husband in the first week in July, brought her husband’s clothing to Dee.
“Since the middle of July I have made 25 quilts out of that man’s clothing,” Dee explained.
To illustrate her point she showed a stack of the folded, completed quilts.
Materials for quilts can be quite varied, she explained.
“I prefer the polyester/cotton blends, cotton and vintage material,” Dee said. And speaking of vintage, she will also repair vintage quilts.
Dee explained vintage materials consist of the older fabrics, those once used to sack meal, flour, sugar and other goods, like animal feed.
 

Monitor Photo/Barbara Gartman
The Quilt Lady, Dee Oliver, displays a work in progress, Girl in a Sun Bonnet quilt. The huge sewing machine, designed for quilting, rides back and forth on a bar as it quilts the material and backing together. Shelves are full of material and finished quilts for sale.

In the days of the old cotton sacks, the material, printed in floral designs and other patterns, was often used to make clothing for the family, curtains and, of course, quilts. The plain, white cotton sacks were used mostly for children’s and ladies’ undergarments and tea towels.
One such vintage sack she has collected held the flour from 38th Texas Governor, M. Price Daniel’s flour mill. It has his name and logo.
Her quilt creations begin around $200 and go not up, but down.
“I don’t try to make a lot. I do it mostly for the pleasure I get from making a quilt,” she said.
Her work area is surrounded with shelves loaded with stacks of material. Her quilts are displayed around the approximately 50 x 150 foot room.
“My shop is not real fancy but it is set up to my convenience,” Dee said, adding she designed the inside of the building
Another fun item she enjoys is the Internet, but it is still related to quilting.
“I get on the Internet and go to Paradise Quilting and visit with other women,” she explained.
One such “visit” resulted in a woman bringing a box of vintage material to her house and giving it to her.