Birthday quilt captures pattern of diversity

Present portrayed as town reaches 300
By Christine McArdle, Globe Correspondent | December 4, 2005

Planning the large, colorful quilt to honor Brookline's anniversary wasn't easy.

After all, how do you illustrate a 300-year-old town?

''At one point, someone suggested bringing in a professional designer," said Jean Stringham, a volunteer art curator at Brookline's Senior Center. ''But we didn't want a traditional grid."

When the call went out for volunteers to work on the quilt, more than 50 women and one man responded.

Some worked on individual blocks, each deciding on what technique to use and how to present their subject.

Others, such as members of the Brookline Bees quilting group, pieced it together.

''We pictured lots of green and open space in South Brookline, with intense buildings and trolley tracks crossing the rest," said Ruthann Dobek, director of the Senior Center, which sponsored the quilt. ''Instead of a designer, we used the map in the Tab's police blotter. It gave us our outline, the shape of the town."

The quilt, which will tour the town in coming months, doesn't dwell on history. It celebrates the town of Brookline as it is today.

When they finished, quilter Molly Paul was satisfied. ''It is just like Brookline, with its gorgeous crazy-quilt diversity of points of view," she said.

Each quilter brought their own vision.

Evy Megerman showed the Town Hall from a side perspective; librarians Anne Clark and Anne Reed, who have worked a combined 49 years, illustrated the library by embroidering an open book and the motto ''where stories begin" between the building's front columns.

Susan Sapolsky programmed her sewing machine to simulate the stonework at the Brookline Village fire station, which she describes as ''a Venetian building with a Lego-like quality."

''I stopped when the fire station became recognizable," she said, ''but I could have stitched on for hours. Then I used free-motion embroidery for the bell, the door and window detail, and flag."

Peter Stringham, who learned to sew at age 11, hand-appliquéd one luminous copper beech to represent Longwood Mall.

Iris Sonnenschein used raw-edge appliqué to give the Brookline Arts Center a van Gogh look. Carol Caro modeled her Allandale farm on a David Hockney painting of a farm scene.

Miriam K. Sokoloff added one of the town's new information kiosks to the quilt.

''I saw a Brookline 300 poster in a bank window," she said. ''They took it down for me, shrunk it 25 percent and 25 percent again, and it fits perfectly. . . . You can even read it."

When Sokoloff wanted to add terra-cotta planters to the front of her Senior Center block, Sarah Neckes embroidered them; when she wanted a trolley car passing by, Elizabeth Kampe was ready.

''I admired Anne Berman's drafting skills when we were planning the quilt," Sokoloff said. ''She laughed and said she was an architect. We had such a pool of talent."

Judith Solomont had not been down Beals Street until she was asked to depict President John F. Kennedy's birthplace. She's been quilting since taking Sokoloff's course at Brookline Adult Education three years ago.

Her crocheted porch and ''glass-paneled" front door brought praise from the other quilters. ''I am humbled to be in their midst," she said. ''I just hope people enjoy looking at this quilt as much as we enjoyed working on it."

The Brookline 300 Quilt is on tour through the spring. It will be at the Senior Center, 93 Winchester St., through December; at the Main Library, 350 Washington St., Jan. 3 to Feb. 15, and then in local schools, banks, and Town Hall. For more information, contact Ruthann Dobek at 617-730-2756 or ruthann_dobek@town.brookline.ma.us.



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