Wife Gives Her Husband the Needle; He Sews Up Retirement by Learning to Quilt

Clarence Hummer worked hard all his life, and he didn’t think retirement should change that.

He took up quilting after he finished the outside work on his modest home in this south central Pennsylvania community. His wife, Mary, 77, was working on a quilt and the man she calls Daddy was looking for something to do.

“He said, ‘Mother, do you think I can do that?’ ” she said. “He helped me to finish.”

“I picked it up myself, with her managing,” he said.

Hummer, 73, wasn’t a natural, however. “It took me a week to make the first patch,” he said. “I took them apart no end. We’re both pretty precise how we want it.”

The mental inventory of his finished quilts is arranged by their owners--two granddaughters, a student nurse who stayed in their home, a niece, a friend in Ohio, their great-grandson, and daughter Orlena Kuhn. Future projects are done in the order requested.

The quilts are geometric patterns of colorful scraps, often arranged on a plain background.

Sews Comforter Covers

He also makes comforters by sewing together rectangles of fabric. The top is “knotted,” not quilted, to create the finished product. Hummer is working on his 25th comforter top, to be finished by members of a local sewing circle.

Until his retirement in 1982, he was a janitor in a Chambersburg office building, then held two part-time jobs, at the National Guard Armory and the public assistance office.

“I’ve always been a hard worker and I couldn’t see the point in retiring, but my lungs gave out from having pneumonia so often,” he said.

Now, the hobby has taken over. The Hummers had a two-room addition built last summer: upstairs, more space for their son, Marvin; on the first floor, a sunny sewing room.

They also upgraded their storage system. They moved their fabric scraps from cardboard boxes into a cupboard that is now crammed with material.

Hummer works on quilts every day, in the easy chair he calls his “nest.”

Wife Arranges Pattern

Mary Hummer hasn’t made a quilt alone since he took up the craft, but she arranges the colors for his quilts. He sews by hand with a fine needle, without even a thimble.

When the top is done, he uses a pencil to mark the lines that will be stitched during quilting to create a subtle counterpoint to the colorful design. He must have someone else do the quilting, but he binds the edges.

One quilter charges him 30 cents per yard of thread used. For a double-wedding-ring quilt he recently finished, that added up to more than $100.

That’s about the only cost estimate he can make accurately. “There’s no way you can figure the hours, the way I work at it,” he said. He works on a quilt, then a comforter, puts it down to help make a meal or to bring Marvin home from work, picks it up again while talking with a visitor.

He watches other quilt prices to set his own, even though they seem high to him. A double-wedding-ring quilt brought $500 at a recent auction.

Son of a Quilter

“My mother was a quilter,” he said. “She had me cut patches, but I never put any together.”

For 53 years, the Hummers have slept under a wool comforter his mother made for them as a wedding gift. When it wore out, he made a new cover for it.

The Hummers met at a church revival meeting. She was seated in front of him. When the songbooks were passed out to be purchased or borrowed, he paid for one and handed it to her over her shoulder. He still carries in his wallet a picture of the two of them during their courtship, his 1927 Ford in the background.