Community Corner

A Retired School Teacher's Love For Quilting

Dolly Hale spends her days making quilts for pure enjoyment.

Quilts of every size, color and pattern fill Dolly Hale’s living room on a cold winter day.

Hale, 66, made every single quilt simply because she wanted to. Hale, a retired elementary school teacher, began making quilts almost two years ago after a friend asked her to go to a quilt class.

“It is so fascinating to me,” said Hale. “It is something I can work on when I want to. It keeps me busy and it is rewarding.”

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She began making quilts for her class after she discovered her love for quilting. She would make quilts relating to the season, holidays or lessons she was teaching.

“I’ve made a quilt with spiders on it, silhouettes of my students and Easter eggs,” Hale said. “It just depended on the year and what I felt like doing.” 

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And to top it off at the end of the school year she had her students write about their two favorite quilts. Then she would give each student one of the quilts she made during the school year.

In 2010, after 43 years of teaching kindergarten and first grade, Hale decided to retire. Her last school year was 2009-2010 at Franklin-Pierce Elementary School.

Even though she stopped teaching it didn’t stop her from continuing to give her quilts away as gifts. For a Christmas present she gave her friend Shirley Coyner a Laurel Burch quilt.

“She just blows my mind I don’t know how she does it,” Coyner said. “It is mind boogying.”

Hale also makes purses and pillowcases. She made special pillowcases for the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.  The pillowcases have handles on them so when children leave they can put all their belongs in it and use it a bag. She also made small quilts for the ICU.

When she isn’t at home making quilts, she is at one of her five quilting classes. Hale takes classes at Parkland Parish Quilt in Parkland and at Wild Rose in Sumner.

In March, Hale will be teaching a workshop in Tacoma with Pierce County daycares on how to make hand-printed quilts. Participants will make a quilt themselves so they can then do it with their preschool students.

 “The reactions on people’s faces are what I enjoy,” Hale said. “I absolutely love it.”


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