Stitched With Love––

Lana Patane Makes Quilt For Ashlar Auction

By Dottie Evans

Some very lucky person may already be holding the winning ticket.

Chances have been on sale for a little over a week now, for an heirloom quilt being offered for raffle by Ashlar of Newtown.

The hand-stitched, king-size quilt was made by Sandy Hook resident and Ashlar volunteer Lana Patane, and it will be awarded Friday, November 21, at a drawing to be held during the Autumn Leaves Auction and Dinner Dance at the Trumbull Marriott.

Mrs Patane has a special association with Ashlar that goes beyond her role as volunteer and member of the Development Committee. Her mother, Victoria Bruno, had been a resident of the senior residential and healthcare facility for over three years. Mrs Bruno passed away in February 2002.

While her mother was at Ashlar, Mrs Patane had begun serving coffee and playing Trivia games with the third floor residents. She felt they had become her friends. So in January 2003, when the Ashlar of Newtown Development Committee began discussing this year’s fund-raising activities, Mrs Patane worked on the auction with Ashlar president Tom Gutner and knew she could help.

“For me, this [fundraising goal] touched a soft spot, because I knew the money we raise goes directly to the residents for their clothing and their personal needs. I knew how much it meant to them,” said Mrs Patane.

Her decision to make the quilt was made by Friday, January 10, and she began work the very next day.

On Tuesday, July 15, Mrs Patane’s completed 100 by 100-inch king-size cotton quilt was displayed for the first time at Ashlar’s Tuesday Summer Sounds concert, and tickets are already on sale for November’s auction.

A Long, Snowy Winter Means

Great Quilting Weather

Lana Patane’s quilt features a classic pattern called Dresden Plate in 16 panels or blocks laid down against a white background. The dominant color is periwinkle blue with accents in lavender and shades of rose floral. The top is made up of 16 blocks each containing a large design that resembles a china plate.

Mrs Patane started in early January of this year, but she said, “it feels like a lifetime” since she began because she has done very little else since taking on the project.

She expressed her gratitude to Sheila Darling of Hidden Hollow Quilting in Sherman, who used a special “long-arm quilting” technique to “put the whole sandwich together,” after she had finished the layers and stitched the binding.

Each square plate was hand-appliqued to the quilt body and the whole was constructed in layers, she explained. She worked on the blocks individually at home, developing her own method of placing and pinning the parts while doing the handiwork and she was “surprised to see how small my stitches were.”

Mrs Patane, who took up quilting only three years ago to make smaller quilts for her three grandsons, got her ideas from some patterns she had seen in several quilting magazines.

“I chose this design and embellished it, changed it, added to it. Continuity in the relationship of the blocks to the border was very important,” she added.

“Now I treat it like a surrogate child, taking it out on our deck for an airing every now and then. I drape the railing with muslin and put a cover over it so if the birds fly over, nothing bad happens.

“It looks wonderful in the natural light,” she commented.

A Work In Progress

Despite the time constraint, Mrs Patane had confidence that the quilt could be finished in time for display and sale of raffle tickets before the drawing. In retrospect, she says she is not sure how she managed to keep to the schedule, but that the long hard winter was a big help.

Her family had always supported her artistic endeavors — the many paintings and children’s books and albums she had fashioned for her home. She has an artist’s eye and a flair for design, not to mention a very focused work habit, that they knew would carry her through.

All along, the Ashlar quilt project presented its own series of artistic challenges. One such was the choice for the color and pattern of the material at the center of each of the 16 quilted Dresden plate designs.

“At first I thought it would be the periwinkle blue, but when I tried that, it looked like a bunch of bull’s-eyes,” Mrs Patane said.

So she experimented with a lot of different swatches and finally settled upon a softer, light blue flowered pattern that she said “looks like Royal Doulton china.”

Somehow, the days went by and she managed to keep to her original schedule.

“I knew time was of the essence and, thankfully, we had this horrible winter. Making the quilt kept me from tearing down walls or redesigning the house,” she joked.

Mrs Patane kept a journal of hours spent and the quilt’s progress. Looking back, she was amused at the frequency of the entry: “Another snowy day and I’m here doing my quilt.”

Where Raffle Tickets

May Be Purchased

Now that the quilt is finished and tickets for the November raffle are being sold around town, Mrs Patane sees her role changing to that of a marketing person.

She has worked hard to secure outlets where the raffle tickets may be sold, and part of the challenge, she said, was obtaining an excellent four-color, poster-size photographic reproduction of the quilt to display at the various locations. Hanging the actual quilt around town would be out of the question.

Bill Greene, also on the Ashlar Development Committee, was the person responsible for taking the photographs and Mrs Patane feels they are an excellent representation of the quilt and its colors.

As for the ticket sales, they are already going well. Mrs Patane’s son and his wife, and her daughter, have become very attached to the quilt, and she said they are buying as many chances as possible.

“They are hoping to keep it in the family. They’ll be bummed out if they don’t get it,” she laughed.

 

Raffle tickets for Lana Patane’s 100-inch by 100-inch king-size Dresden Plate quilt are $5 each and may be purchased at Ashlar of Newtown, Toddy Hill Road, Sandy Hook, 426-5847.

They are also available at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street, Newtown, 426-4533; Newtown Florist at 22 Church Hill Road, 426-1776; Newtown Savings Bank, main office, 39 Main Street, 426-2563; and at Linnell Real Estate, 1 Washington Avenue, Sandy Hook, 364-0167.

Other sources for raffle tickets in the Greater Danbury area are: Dagmar’s Fabrics, 1481-6 Southford Road, Southbury, 262-1206, and the owner is Barbara; JH Homestead, 5 Front Street, Bethel, 744-3118, and the owner is Vivian; Quilter’s Corner, 312 Danbury Road, New Milford, 860-355-4514 and the owner is Becky; and The Quilt Shop, 16 Padanaram Road, Danbury, 743-0543, and the owner is Ginney.