WESTMINSTER — Moon’s Drugs, located at 132 Main St. in Westminster, and owned by Jerry and Kathy Smith, has added the 175th quilt on the Upstate Heritage Quilt Trail.
The quilt, called Thai Memories of Saffron and Silk, was designed by Barbara Shapel of Washougal, Wash., and pieced and quilted by Jane Oliver of Hayesville, N.C.
Moon’s occupies several buildings on Main Street, all of them historic. The buildings that house Moon’s Home Medical and Gifts were built in the 1800’s. The middle building, which is home to Moon’s Drug Store, opened as a drug store in 1901 and has remained there ever since.
Kathy Smith said one of her favorite quilts on display at the 2014 Festival of Quilts in Seneca was the Thai Memories of Saffron and Silk made by Jane Oliver.
Jane Oliver is a fiber artist living in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina. She has enjoyed every minute of a life-long passion for fabrics, fibers, needles, and thread. Her evolution through this medium has taken many forms.
The one fiber path she intended never to follow was quilting — until it grabbed her heart in the 1980’s and never let go. Today most of Oliver’s creative work involves art quilts. Her inspiration is often drawn from nature — the mountains outside her windows, the ocean, and the coastal salt marshes. Her work has won awards in several guild shows. Various pieces are in private collections.
Oliver has studied to develop her quilting skills by taking courses from the John C. Campbell Folk School in Western NC to studying with nationally/internationally recognized instructors in Sisters, Ore. It was in Sisters that she met and began study with Barbara Shapel, quilt artist and mentor.
From this study emerged Thai Memories in Saffron and Silk. This piece is composed primarily of silk fabrics brought back from a trip to Thailand where Oliver was deeply impressed with the rich colors and textures of the Thai fibers and with the pervasive sights of the saffron robes worn by the Buddhist monks.
Oliver holds degrees from the University of Georgia, one a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, the other a Masters of Education in Instructional Technology. Her favorite job was as owner of a needlework retail shop where she taught classes in various techniques.
However, she also held jobs in business development for a historic preservation/landscape architecture firm, in a college library, and as a hospital medical librarian. Today Oliver pursues the creative world of fiber and delights in watching her grandchildren grow up.
Barbara Shapel is an award-winning quilt artist, teacher, lecturer and author. Her quilts have appeared in many publications and are included in private collections nationally and internationally.
Today she is known for creating two-sided quilts where the back is a reflection of the front and offers the viewer a different perspective of the same piece. She also works to integrate the quilting line and make it an important part of the overall design of the piece.
In 2005, Shapel retired from Clark College, located in Vancouver, Wash., where she taught computer software application classes for almost 20 years. She now focuses full-time on creating fiber art and teaching others the joy of quilt making. She lives with her family in Washougal, Wash.
In 2003, Shapel kept having recurring dreams about ocean waves. After she created “Currents,” a local quilt shop owner suggested making a pattern based on the quilt. It became the first quilt pattern in her line of patterns that now includes over a dozen different designs.
“Currents” continues to be her most popular pattern and she has taught hundreds of classes based on this design. It is always fun to see how students interpret the pattern to make it their own. Jane Oliver’s version is an outstanding example of taking a master pattern and adding her own vision to create a beautiful, unique quilt.
