By Rebecca Hattaway
January 12, 2010 — For Le Ann Weaver, quilting is more than her profession. Formerly the owner of a quilt shop in Tulsa, in 2005 Le Ann and her husband, Scott, moved to rural Claremore and closed the store to begin Persimmon Quilts, a longarm quilting business from her home studio.
“We both grew up on farms and wanted water and a hill,” she said. “We looked for years and years and finally found this place. We love it here.”
Now customers bring her their quilt tops and backing for Weaver to quilt together with batting using her industrial-sized longarm, basically a huge sewing machine.
Even though Weaver has turned quilting a successful business venture, it remains her true passion — something she wakes up every day excited about.
“I made my first quilt when I was a senior in high school out polyester lavender bell bottoms for my niece. I totally winged it but she loved it,” she said.
Over the next decade, her love of fabric slowly grew into a love for quilting.
“When my son was born I made some crib-sized quilts and taught my stepdaughters how to make them,” she said. “That got me going and once my son was in school I could spend more time at my sewing machine and that’s when I opened my quilt shop.”
Completely self-taught, Weaver says she has learned her craft the hard way. She now teaches classes and workshops to others who benefit from not having develop their skill by trial and error.
She has even co-authored a quilting book, “Loose Change: Quilts from Nickels, Dimes and Fat Quarters,” with Claudia Plett of Inola.
“We met in an online quilting forum and became really good friends before even knowing we lived so close,” Weaver said. “Then she started working at my quilt shop. She basically taught me everything I know about designing quilts.”
The book was released in fall 2008 and has been on the best seller list of quilting books ever since.
“There was just a wonderful reaction to it and last week we shipped off our second book, a sequel called ‘More Loose Change.’ It will debut at the Houston Market, a yearly international quilt market, in October.”
Weaver says quilting is very much alive and well across the country and in northeastern Oklahoma.
“In 2006 Quilts Inc. released a survey that says there are 27 million active quilters in the United States. Quilting is a billion dollar industry,” she said. “I think with the economy now the retail stores are probably hurting but quilters are starting to go back to their ‘stash’ — what we call our hordes of fabric — to make more scrappy quilts.”
Several years ago, Weaver began volunteering her time and expertise to work with Quilts of Valor, an organization that makes and distributes quilts for veterans.
“My husband was in the Marine Corps and my son-in-law just deployed Sunday. He’s in the Army. I felt really drawn to the cause,” she said.
She serves as co-director of the Northeast Oklahoma Quilts of Valor chapter that meets the second Saturday of each month at the Broken Arrow Library.
“We have grown to about 30 or 40 volunteers that help along the process, even some that don’t quilt but we have jobs for them. We also have people that donate fabric and money. Centrilift ships them for us,” she said.
This year Weaver hopes the group will complete at least 160 quilts — if not more.
She has also designed a quilt as part of a Quilts of Valor special project called “Touched by War” which will start soon.
“Our goal it to get one million quilters across the country working on this project,” she said. “To date, the Quilts of Valor Foundation has made 26,000 quilts but the need is hundreds of thousands.”
To learn more about Quilts of Valor or how to be involved in the local chapter, visit www.qovf.org.
