Quilt Lady Sally Tirs is a true material girl
By Sande Snead CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Crenshaw Elementary School students (from left) Elizabeth Gordy, Brandon Sullivan and Brayden Gordy celebrate the completion of another quilt with "Quilt Lady" Sally Tirs.

Making a quilt is no easy feat, but it's something that kindergarten teacher Sally Tirs (aka The Quilt Lady) has been doing for expecting teachers and families at Crenshaw Elementary School for a dozen years, and nine years at Beulah Elementary before that.

"For anybody who is expecting, she makes a baby quilt," said Crystal Tetlow, who teaches kindergarten at Crenshaw. "She makes the quilt and then brings it to the baby shower where we have a knotting party, and everybody ties a knot. It's a community-type event. It is such a special tradition. Kids in college now still have their Grandma Sally quilt."

After all the years of quilting, Tetlow and the other Crenshaw kindergarten teachers wanted to do something special for Tirs in return. To mark Tirs' 59th birthday last month, Tetlow presented her friend with a scrapbook full of thank you notes and photos of children with their quilts.

"I am never quiet, but I was totally speechless," Tirs said. "The book was filled with pictures of quilts and all of the kids I made quilts for. Kids who were too young to write thank you notes just scribbled on the page. Of course I started crying."

One of her favorite pages was from Eden, the four-year-old brother of one of her former students, Evan Connor.

"His page said how he loved his grandma quilt," Tirs said. "He had his little footprint on the page and put turkey feathers on it and wrote, 'I am toe thankful for my quilt.'"

The 35-page album is filled with 8.5-by-11- inch pages that are slipped into sheet protectors, so more pages from quilt recipients can be added.

"Quilting is my passion, so what I do is totally selfish," Tirs said. "When I was 16, my mom and I used to make quilts together so I've been doing it ever since."

Tirs hasn't kept count of how many quilts she's made, though she says it is the most frequently asked question. If she had to guess, she says she thinks she's made about 250 or more.

Baby quilts don't take that long, according to Tirs. They are one and a quarter of a yard. With a tied quilt, thread or yarn ties are looped through all of the layers and tied on one side to hold the layers together. Looping through the layers takes Tirs about a half hour. Putting on the edges takes the longest. Girls quilts get eyelet lace and boys get triangle points - all done by hand. All totaled, a quilt can take Tirs two to three hours.

"The fun part is having people to help with the knotting at the end," Tirs said.

Tirs' patient husband understands that stopping at fabric stores is part of any vacation. "My husband and I ride bikes, and we always stop at a quilt shop in Staunton and buy lots of fabric. I also go to Quilter's Corner and Hancock Fabrics, and I buy lace by the bolt. I'm a material girl."

Grandma Sally has two granddaughters in Colorado, but she is surrogate to many. Ben, who is the nephew of a dear friend, was going on an airplane trip and had pulled all of the knots out of his quilt. Tirs received a note asking if she could do surgery on the blanket before he went out of town.

"The deal is that you have to really love your quilt," Tirs said. "If you don't, I'll make another one, and you get to pick the fabric or the theme."

Tirs admits that quilting is almost a lost art, but there is hope. She's training her 31-yearold daughter, Mindy Carter.

"Hopefully, this tradition will be handed down," says Tirs.