Every quilt tells a story.

        And Lynn Ticotsky's friends tease her because, when the last knot is tied on each of her quilts — whether they are headed for a gallery or a bed in her Hyde Park home — she records information about the materials used, the reason they were chosen and the design of the needlework.

Lynn Ticotsky fashioned her quilt, "Of Mice and Menswear" from men's suits. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Then, “I take a picture of my "babies' and send them away,” she says.

        Traditional quilts that passed under her fingers during years as manager of En Provence, a French-country store in Hyde Park, left her wondering:

        “Why did the person who made (the quilt) use this particular fabric or that pattern? I wanted to know their history,” she says.

        Each one was like an unfinished book.

        She wants her work, including three pieces that are part of Stories in Stitches at the YWCA Women's Art Gallery, downtown, to take their stories with them when they leave her attic studio.

        Her creations and the 20-plus works at the show, bear little resemblance to great-grandma's hand-stitched tribute to efficiency made from men's suits and tie pieces.

        Many show pieces are machine-quilted, using 20th-century threading and fabrics, rhinestones, glitter, photographs and paint. And the folks at Kinko's and sewing machine repairmen are as important to today's quilters as the church quilting bee was to great grandma.
        When she creates a design, Ms. Ticotsky, 54, works out her pattern on a paper grid, then takes it to the neighborhood copier to blow it up before the construction begins.

        “I'm on a first-name basis with the Singer repairman in Silverton,'' Ms. Ticotsky says. “I've burned out four foot pedals.”

IF YOU GO

What: Stories in Stitches, an exhibition of non-traditional quilts.     When: 8:30 a.m.-9 p.m., daily, through March 15.     Where: YWCA Women's Art Gallery, 898 Walnut St., downtown.     Cost: Free.     Information: 241-7090.

        Pretty quick work for a painter with a master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design who didn't know how to run a sewing machine when she started quilting in 1992.

        “I never sewed on a machine as a child. My grandma was a knitter, and I learned to sew by hand and embroider when I was 4. In Great Britain (where she grew up) needlework was a big deal.

        “When I went to college, I thought real art was drawing and painting. I played with the other stuff as a hobby.

        “I was a closet fiber artist,” says the woman who has crafted 56 quilts since attending her first 12-week course at the Ohio Valley Quilters Guild at Grailville in 1992. She describes her teacher during a self-imposed six-month sabbatical from work as a “zen quilter.”

        “That showed me how to translate my fine arts background using color and shape.”

        She never went back to her Hyde Park shop job.

        After taking another hand-quilting class and declaring the process that others treasure as “definitely not for me,” she dragged her mother's “never used” Singer out of storage and began a new career.

STITCHING A SHOW

Lynn Ticotsky was shuffling through photos of her quilts at Norton Photography in Corryville and sensed someone looking over her shoulder.     It was Ali Hanson, co-curator of the YWCA's Women's Art Gallery, who had been brainstorming a quilt show for the YWCA gallery space.     “I actually followed Lynn out to her car and asked her if she'd be part of the show,” says Ms. Hanson. “Totally by chance, she knew another quilter who had shown quilts at the Y and things began to gel.     “I went after people who did non-traditional quilts that told stories.”     Quilters in the show include Carolyn Mazloomi, Casey Collier, Lisa Siders-Kenney and others whose works tell a story. For instance, Ms. Collier's literal“A trip to Provence,” uses photos and French fabrics to tell the story of a trip to France. And Ms. Mazloomi's “In the Winter of My Life I Can Still See Springtime,” is a more abstract celebration of the strength and struggles of women.

        She starts with traditional quilt block designs (the log cabin is her favorite) and “stretches them into new realms of interpretation often using a playful approach to explore the endless possibilities.”

        A confessed “fabriholic,” she picks up yards of color from workshops and stores, stacking them from top to bottom of her home. Labeled boxes fill the space under a buffet in the dining room. Two projects are draped on second-floor beds. And laundry baskets and bookcases in the third-floor workroom are stacked with cottons, velvets, silks, damasks, rayons.

        Two more bookcases rest by the front door headed for her workroom, “where I plan to organize everything by color. I have a book upstairs that tells me what fabric is where,” but she laughs at the prospect of finding it.

        Plastic containers lining the workshop hall overflow with buttons, cord, ribbon, glitter, fabric paint and beads.

        “At one point, I had so much fabric piled on the third floor steps, they were sagging,” Ms. Ticotsky says.

        Her work space is an organizer's dream job.

        But one look at any of her pieces reveals an organized mind that can wrap itself around a quilting square and turn it into a puzzle of structure.

        Visually deconstructing her “Unbearably Bodacious” bear claw design or the interlocking tessellated blocks in “Tipsy Tiles,” reminiscent of Islamic mosque floor tiles, could trigger a migraine. Finding the beginning of a pattern is like working a puzzle, but one of color, texture and fabric.

        Ms. Ticotsky works in reverse.

        “I see the big picture or overall design first and then it becomes a puzzle as I break it down into into components,” working the math out on paper before the cutting begins.

        A 4 1/2-inch-square block one piece is made of 24 tiny pieces, sewn to a paper grid constructed from her calculations and peeled away at the finish.

        A small quilt, 15 inches square, can contain 250 to 300 pieces. Full-size raffle quilts, often worked on by 20 people and auctioned for a cause, can contain as many as 2,000.

        Nothing seems beyond her artistic reach.

        As a novice quilter, she showed a photograph of a cottage in Cotswold, England, near her home, to a fellow quilter looking for advice on how to turn it into a quilt.

        “No way,” she was told.

        “That was all I needed to hear.”

        She started in May and successfully finished the fabric re-creation of the photo in September.

        Each year, she creates a large quilt for the Cincinnati Nature Center, which gave her the first commission in her career. Her work was featured in a retrospective to last year's Cincinnati Flower Show as well as several other shows including Grailville, one of her favorites.

        Ms. Ticotsky long ago ran out of room in her house for her work.

        She says: “My absolute most wonderful thing now is to make (a quilt), put it in a gallery or show, and have someone take it home to display.”

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