Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
When Marie Con-over was a young girl, her family moved to Pocahontas County from Scotland. Her dad got a job as the farm manager for the Beard Farm, owned by Jessie Powell. The family stayed here for about 10 years and then moved to Pennsylvania.
While she enjoyed life in Pennsylvania, Conover always kept Pocahontas County in her mind.
Three years ago, Conover and her husband, Brian, moved to Green Bank, and shortly thereafter, Conover joined the Pocahontas County Artisans Co-op where she sells her quilted items.
“I’ve always been pretty creative – drawing and writing – and I did a little bit of sewing, like clothing and stuff in school,” she said.
One day, when she was at a local grocery store in Pennsylvania, Conover picked up a magazine that had instructions on how to make a log cabin quilt. That was what sparked her quilting hobby.
“I looked at it and I thought, ‘well I probably could handle that,’” she said. “So that’s how I started.
“I still have that quilt, but it’s falling apart, she added, laughing. “It wasn’t very well made.”
Through the years, her skills improved and now she is making all kinds of quilted items including her big sellers, bowl cozies. She is able to make quite a few at a time because of their size. This leads to more free time for larger projects, like wall hangings and full-size quilts.
“I’ve tried various things,” she said. “I’ll see something new and try that. I’ll see something online or in a book – I’ve got tons of books – and I’ll think, ‘well I’ll give that a whirl.’ Sometimes things don’t work out and sometimes they do.”
In addition to making her own quilts, Conover has a small business finishing quilts for others.
“I’ve got one of these real big machines,” she said. “I do some quilting for other people. There’s Shirley Roach. She’s still quilting and she cranks out tons of tops for me, and I do the thing on the big machine. Courtney Curran, has been giving me some, too. I’ve been getting a little bit of business around here.”
When she’s not quilting, Conover is working from home, doing medical coding.
Her husband, who is a part-time cook at Mountain State Hot Spot in Boyer, also has an eye for quilts. He doesn’t make any, but he knows the good ones when he sees them at shows and festivals.
“My husband is kind of funny,” she said. “If we see quilts hanging somewhere or if we go to a show, he always goes right to the back of them. He looks at the back of the quilt because he wants to see the quilting design.”
Conover is happy to be a member of the co-op and enjoys getting her work out in the two locations – 4th Avenue Gallery and The Shops at Leatherbark Ford – but there is one thing she misses. That is the quilting guild she belonged to Pennsylvania which met each month.
“I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person there,” she said. “That was kind of fun because you would go once a month and they would do free classes. Everybody would bring their machines, and you would be working on a new project or learn something new for free.
“And you got to bring your quilts in and show them what you had done,” she added. “That was pretty neat.”
Luckily, there are a lot of quilters in Pocahontas County and Conover has become friends with some of them through her work in the Artisans Co-op.
