Masten is this year's featured quilter

A needle and thread heals in more ways than one. For Janet Masten, the featured quilter at this year’s Teakettle Quilters Guild show, it was a way to forget the stress of work and life.

“I was a nurse and quilting was therapeutic,” Masten said last week. “I’d come home, relax and quilt.”

Just a sampling of the fruits of that therapy lay on a queen bed in the guest room of her Kalispell home. One quilt features family photos, another an award-winning quilt of a moose in tribute to Glacier National Park and another of Christmas scenes. Those are just a few of the many layers of quilts laying on the bed — 35 in all.

Now retired, Masten doesn’t quilt as much as she did when she had a full-time job.

“I got more quilting done when I was working than I do now,” she said.

She said her style doesn’t stick to any one particular theme.

“I do them all,” she said. “It depends on the mood of the day.”

Masten learned to sew from her grandmother and mother beginning at the age of 6 growing up in Michigan. Both women were professional seamstresses.

She moved to Montana in 1972. Her husband worked on pipeline construction, so when she wasn’t raising a family, she had time to herself to quilt. She now has two children, six grandchildren and six great grandchildren, with two more on the way.

Making a quilt can take as a little time as one day or two to three weeks, depending on the intricacy of the pattern and the number of blocks that need to be sewn together. Masten said she likes to use bamboo as batting because it’s soft and warm.

“It’s a renewable resource,” she said.

The Teakettle Quilters Guild show will be held at the Glacier Gateway Elementary School this Saturday. The guild has about 80 members, and Masten said she was a bit surprised to learn she’d be featured this year. She said she was chatting with some friends about whom she thought would be a good choice when they announced her name.

Several of Masten’s favorite quilts will be on display. The show will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and include vendors and demonstrations. Admission is free, but non-perishable donations to the Columbia Falls Food Bank will be appreciated.