Color Man: Polson quilter creates with color
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POLSON — “I’m just a simple guy,” Rocky Stanley said, but his quilts say he’s a color magician.
Not many men quilt, but Stanley started quilting about five years ago, out of boredom.
“I wanted to try something new,” he said.
So he went to All in Stitches and picked a quilt pattern, although the clerks didn’t tell him it was a difficult pattern because they didn’t want to discourage him. He taught himself to use a sewing machine, and it took him a couple of months to “read the directions” and figure out the pattern and quarter-inch seams.
“It was three dimensional,” Stanley said, a quilt pattern called Blocks and Stars.
“Rocky knew exactly what colors he wanted,” Diane Byers at All in Stitches said.
She said they all wondered how the fabrics would work, but “Rocky has a great eye for color, and (the quilt) was beautiful.”
Other quilters agreed with Byers. Stanley won first prize and the People’s Choice at the Mission Mountain Quilt Guild show in Ronan, and a second place at the Kalispell quilt show.
Stanley previously was a painter so he “knew color.”
“I like movement and a lot of pattern (in fabric,)” Stanley said, moving both hands in a circular motion.
His quilts use various prints or shades of one color.
“Sometimes I use five fabrics, but mostly I use three,” Stanley explained.
To begin a new quilt, he’ll find a fabric he really likes and then build on it, choosing material that blends or enhances the main fabric.
Stanley uses the same pattern on all his quilts; it’s called Chimney and Cornerstone. When he first used the pattern it took him a day to cut out the quilt pieces; now, he zooms through the fabric in two and a half hours.
“It’s a simple pattern,” he said.
Meticulous by nature, Stanley said, “I have to have everything in its place.”
After the quilt top is pieced comes the most fun part for Stanley, who hand quilts his works of art. Hand quilting takes approximately a month and a half per quilt.
“That’s my favorite part,” Stanley said with a smile. “It’s quiet, there’s no machine running.”
To learn how to hand quilt, Stanley visited the Polson Senior Citizen’s Center and watched master hand quilter Mary Arden to get the hang of the skill. That’s where Jo Durand met Rocky.
“He took a few lessons from Mary, and then he just kind of took off on his own,” Durand said.
“Rocky brought in a quilt for Kelly, and I just fell in love with it.”
She told Rocky about hope chests her husband Dean was making for their grandchildren and how they would put family things in the chests. Then Durand asked if he would make quilts for the children.
Now several of those quilts are on display in the window at All In Stitches, since Stanley is the featured quilter this month.
One quilt is mossy green prints, another is shades of sunny gold and orange and the third is a warm brown quilt that uses petal shapes to create texture.
