Winterset, Iowa & W.I., WI

I’ve just returned to Quiltropolis (Winterset, Iowa 50273) from Washington Island, Wisconsin (WI), where each year I spend the entire month of August. I call my four weeks of alone-time my Sojourn of Solitude. My husband Mark, a retired airline pilot whose pursuits are Des Moines-centric (bridge, mahjong, and swimming), supportively sends me off on my annual retreat.

I do the same things on Washington Island that I do in Winterset—write, read, sew, and walk—but on Washington Island I do them surrounded by nature.

A wind-y road leads to the Washington Island ferry dock.

Washington Island is off the tip of the Door County Peninsula, past Madison, past Green Bay, past Sturgeon Bay, a ten-hour drive from my other WI, Winterset, Iowa. The car ferry leaves from Northport every half hour in high summer, but only twice a day in winter, and in winter you must have a reservation.

Ice shoves form on the north shore of Washington Island when Lake Michigan freezes, then thaws a bit, and a big wind blows up. I titled this photo, “Taxi!” There are no taxis, no Ubers on Washington Island.

My relationship with Washington Island began during my first marriage (that husband’s grandfather, legend has it, built the island’s first roads), but I formed my own bond after my first co-authored craft book (CLASSIC QUILTED VESTS) was published in 1982.

At the time, Sievers School of Fiber Arts was only a few years old, with summer classes on weaving and spinning. I presented my credentials and became the second quilting teacher on the faculty.

Sievers School’s gift shop, once a one-room schoolhouse, offers beautiful, handcrafted items. I taught beginning quilting within these walls in the early days, when the space was a one of the studios.

Each year (usually in July when the waters of Lake Michigan are a little less cold) we traveled to WI-WI as a family. I taught quilting at Sievers, and my husband and the kids hung out at the island campground, Schoolhouse Beach, Sand Dunes Beach, the Albatross (a burger and ice cream place in business since 1977), and other locations.

After divorcing at 39, I continued to take the kids to Washington Island. It was the only vacation we could afford. While I taught at Sievers, they hung around our rental cabin in their pajamas, went to the beach, played movies on the cabin TV with VCRs, and read books. Later on, when they were college students, if they had a car that could make it, they piled their friends in, drove north, and stayed at Gibson’s, a compound of cottages on West Harbor Road that’s been there since 1910.

Over a decade ago, Mark and I stumbled upon a property that had been on the market for seven years and purchased it. A former boathouse 100 paces from the cottage door became my sewing studio. (My quilty daughter Mary Fons named it the Little Boathouse.) I named the quilts I made in the Little Boathouse names inspired by this special, beloved place. Below, Northport Crossing.

Northport Crossing, 60 x 75 inches, 2016.

Mark painted one interior wall of my sewing studio chalkboard black, and I kept track of my quilt production on that wall for a long time. The day came a few years ago, though, when I erased the titles of my quilts and used the chalkboard to chart the timeline of the novel I was writing.

I love writing in block letters on a chalkboard. A felt tipped marker slides off the surface of a dry-erase board, but real chalk forms a relationship between the black surface and the tip of the chalk.

I completed my manuscript a couple of weeks ago and sent it off to my agent in New York. She promises to read it soon.