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Diana Mahrenholz, an INFB member from Posey County, got involved with quilting almost by accident, and 45 years later, it’s still one of her favorite ways to keep busy.

Mahrenholz and her husband, Terry, a retired grain farmer, now live in a house that is made colorful and cozy with her quilts. Quilts hang on the walls and adorn couches and chairs.

But the displayed quilts are only a small part of her collection. She has three closets containing 41 quilts stored in pillowcases, and she also has a closet a closet containing quilt tops waiting to be turned into to be turned into finished quilts.

“I normally have three quilts going at any one time,” she said, including a machine-pieced quilt that she works on at retreats or get-togethers with her quilting friends. A second quilt will be loaded into Mahrenholz’s “longarm” quilting machine, which is a moveable machine on a frame that stitches all the layers of the quilt together.

And the third will be a hand-worked quilt that she can piece while sitting in a comfy chair.

“In the evening I'm sitting there watching TV with my husband and I want some handwork to do," she said.

Her very first quilt was pieced by her mother and was intended as a wedding present to Mahrenholz, whose wedding to Terry was then six months away.

“She got the top done, she put it in the frame, and she said, 'Diana, if you want this for your wedding, you're going to have to quilt it because I don't like doing this.'

“So here I am, 19 years old, engaged, and if I wasn't out with Terry, I was in my bedroom quilting,” she said. She did get the quilt done in time for the wedding, but it was a few years before she tried quilting again.

After their two kids were born, Mahrenholz said, she was an active farm wife, but she wanted something else to do.

"Somebody gave me a bunch of scrap,” she said, explaining that “scrap” was what quilters call an assortment of different fabrics.

“And I thought, ‘Well, I'll just start a quilt.’ I didn't know what I was doing and I ended up making the blocks, and I made them wrong. So I appliqued them on to a sheet, which is the wrong thing to do,” she said.

“But my son used that quilt for a very long time. I've still got it,” she added.

From there, quilting more or less snowballed for Mahrenholz. She started taking classes and going to quilting retreats, learning from some of the big names in the quilting world, such as Bonnie K. Hunter and Edyta Sitar – “the big-name quilt teachers who write the books,” she explained.

She still goes to workshops and retreats and participates in quilting circles. “I love taking classes and learning new techniques,” she explained.

She also has won awards for her quilting, including at the 2023 Indiana Heritage Quilt Show, where she won first place in the large-pieced quilt category. One of her quilts also was shown at the International Quilt Festival held in Houston, Texas, in November.

“Four hundred and twelve quilts were entered, and they picked 222 of them to display. So just making that cut is something,” Mahrenholz said.

While she still pieces many of her quilts by hand, she also uses four sewing machines, including her longarm machine, a Brother Laura Ashley sewing machine and two Singer Featherweights, one of which was her grandmother’s.

“The Featherweights are really small and portable, so you can take them to classes, you can take them to retreats and to sew with girlfriends,” she said. The classes and retreats turn what could be a very solitary activity into a social one.

“I’ve stayed with quilting for 45 years due to the friendships with other quilters that have lasted 30-plus years,” she concluded.