Quilts, as we all know, are a great way to keep warm on a chilly night or in the depths of winter. But quilts also tell stories; more often than not, they are the stories of their creators. Creating a quilt is a painstaking process that has evolved over the years, like so much else in our society, from something that was once purely manual to now being aided by modern technology. The quilters, though, are still storytellers. That won’t ever change.
Madelyn and Duane Maupin are typical American retirees. They’ve been married for almost 52 years, have a very nice upper-middle-class home in an exurb of Columbus, with the trappings of a life spent together sprinkled throughout.
Duane’s background is in information technology – starting with the Navy during the Vietnam War and ending as a networking engineer at Ohio State nearly 40 years later. Madelyn spent her working years in clerical and finance, going from Ohio Bell to the OSU Hospital and then to the university. They retired in 2011 and 2010, respectively.
They’ve got one son, who’s married with two kids, and they live down the street – literally eleven doors away.
It’s all very Middle America idyllic. And that’s the story that Madelyn’s quilts tell.
Madelyn grew up in rural eastern Ohio and when her mother wasn’t working the family farm, she was a seamstress for the town. Always working on a few projects at a time, often with deadlines and odd requests from her customers, the sewing never stopped. Madelyn learned at a young age to make some of her clothes for school and mend things as needed. She says she’d always had a passing interest in quilting and embroidery, but it had never developed beyond that.
Then, after retiring in 2010, she finally decided to make something of that interest and started taking an embroidery class at a local shop. It was quickly followed by learning to quilt, and the two quickly became a hobby – a very serious hobby.
This becomes evident with a quick glance around their lovely home. There are quilts on couches and chair backs – the places you’d expect to find them. But there are also quilts on the walls and a quilted centerpiece on the kitchen table. There are quilted stuffed animals. There are quilting magazines hidden under the Pete Hegseth book on the coffee table. There are quilts folded in neat piles in the bedrooms. And then, there’s the quilting room – where the magic happens – a converted bedroom with two sewing machines and a closet full of supplies. Threads, needles, and patterns, the whole kit.
The stories Madelyn tells aren’t so much reflected directly in the quilts she makes, but rather, the quilts are the story. She makes quilts for an organization that benefits new mothers – 15 to 20 per year. She makes small quilts for each season of the year and decorates the house with them. There are Halloween quilts, Christmastime quilts, spring, summer, and fall quilts. When she finds the time, she wants to make quilts for patients at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus and even for Quilts of Valor – an organization that makes and donates quilts to service members and veterans. She makes quilts for friends, and just for the fun of it.
Madelyn has become such a figure in her quilting community that some of her works are often displayed at her favorite quilt store in nearby Dublin. She has friends she quilts with; they challenge each other to try new things and explore new techniques. What with the glow-in-the-dark thread and small rhinestones and incredibly intricate stitching and textures, many of their quilts are more closely related to works of art than to just cozy, warm wraps.
Speaking of technique, a lot has changed about quilting over the years. Everything used to be done by hand, from the decorative stitching in the top layer to attaching the backing. Nowadays, there are computers and semi-automated machines to help with the detailed work. Patterns come on USB sticks or are downloadable and loaded into sewing machines with big digital displays. But the assembly of the quilt – the process of sewing together the quilt’s multiple panels and layers – is still done the old-fashioned way.
And even though the technology has made the process less time-consuming, Madelyn can still spend a couple of months working on an entire queen-size quilt. Stitch counts reach the millions, and the number of panels can be mind-boggling. Even the small, three-by-five quilts that she makes to hang around the house or give to newborns can take a few weeks from start to finish.
But you can see that she loves it. Madelyn’s eyes light up as she starts to talk about each piece, telling the story of what the panels mean to her, where the pattern came from, or who she’s making it for. Whether it’s a wedding gift for a beloved family member or something for a complete stranger that she’ll never meet, it’s evident that Madelyn has found a passion for this hobby. 
As she gives a tour around the house, showing off her works and telling their stories and the stories of how they came to be, she is very clearly jubilant.
Madelyn and Duane have been clients of Dan’s for nearly thirty years, and they knew soon after meeting Dan, when their previous advisor relocated to a different part of the country, that he would be an excellent fit for them due to their personal beliefs and their investment goals matching so well. Sometimes, Dan has to remind them to spend money and Duane will tell you, with a wink, that Madelyn has no problem with that – she’s got her eye on expanding her supply closet to a bedroom down the hall from the quilting room.
The story that Madelyn’s quilts tell is a story of love and of happiness and of joy. She and Duane are quick with a smile and a joke, even through some recent health struggles and the general doldrums of modern life. There is joy in the small things; there is happiness in the familiar. And it shows in both Madelyn’s eyes and in her quilts.