Sep 28, 2008

This quilt-covered life started with a dream that wouldn’t dieBy Janine UngvarskyTimesLeader.com

The population of Tunkhannock will double next Saturday as more than 2,000 people flock to an unusual and beautiful once-a-year sight. Quilts — hundreds of them — will blanket the streets. The handmade quilts will hang from windows and porches of picturesque Victorian homes and in store displays, flutter from lines strung along the curb and drape over vehicles, fences and bushes. All this beauty — and the influx of business from those who come to see it — is a thank-you from one local businesswoman, her gift to the town where her dream came true.

In May 2001, Jeannette Kitlan was a single mom of four teens working 12-hour swing shifts at Procter & Gamble. “It’s the only place a woman can go out here to earn a wage that can support a family,” she said. Every day, she donned her steel-toed shoes and safety glasses and did what she had to. But inside she held onto a lifelong dream.

As the daughter of a home-economics teacher in the Dallas School District, Kitlan learned her way around a sewing machine early in life. “I was always too tall,” she said, “and the only way to have clothes that fit was to sew them myself.”

After graduating from Tunkhannock Area High School in 1973, Kitlan took her love of sewing to Penn State, where she majored in clothing and textiles. Her senior independent-study project was opening a fabric store, something she was already dreaming of doing for real.

First, though, came work in women’s ready-to-wear in a North Carolina department store and a stint as a teacher, then 14 years as a full-time mother. The dream lingered even as her marriage ended and she found herself working in the factory to take care of her children. It stirred back to life with a hunt for some extra income.

“I was working at Procter & Gamble, and I saw an ad for a long-arm quilting machine,” Kitlan said. Some quilters who prefer assembling quilt tops to the actual quilting pay to have their quilts finished and quilted on the machines. “Since I worked swing shifts, I thought I could do the quilting on my days off to supplement my income,” Kitlan said. But with her mind already on quilting, another opportunity came her way when a Tunkhannock-area quilt shop went up for sale.

At first, Kitlan held back. She had a steady job with good wages and benefits, a tough combination to walk away from with a family to support. The decision came one night when Kitlan realized she was turning her back on her dream. “I knew if I didn’t do this, I would be heartbroken for the rest of my life,” she said.

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