Hi! I’m Mary Ann Hutchinson, the creative mind behind Mary’s Art Hutch, LLC.  I grew up in Wisconsin in a home that encouraged my interest in sewing, art, and travel from an early age.

My love of fabric began the moment the hospital wrapped me in a blanket and handed me to my mom. I was already fingering the edge of the blanket. She thought it was cute. Little did she know!

I began sewing at age three by helping my mom make “Dooley Bags” for the Thomas Dooley Foundation refugee camps in Cambodia. Of course, I didn’t know why or what I was making I just knew it would help people. As I got older, I understood more about the project. I started by threading shoe-strings through the tube edgings on the bags to turn them into drawstring bags. My real fascination was watching my mom take flat pieces of fabric, run them through the machine and make something useful, a drawstring bag. After much begging, and some help from my sewist Grandma Hutch, I was allowed to “feed the fabric” at the machine, but only with an adult in the room. Well, imagine a three year old begging from dawn to dusk to sit at the sewing machine. Not too long after that, I was off and running on my own. The worry was that I would stitch my fingers. Nope, took me another 41 years to do that!

At seven years old, I was making my own play clothes and by eight, most of my school clothes, too. I entered the Singer Youth Sewing competition when I was nine. I bet my dad I could win. The grand prize was a Singer sewing machine. While I won at the local and district levels, I only earned an honorable mention at the regional level. My prize was a gift certificate and a very nice sewing basket. Still, I was devastated. Dad was proud. He surprised me with a Singer sewing machine of my very own. I continued making many of my clothes throughout high school and college.

At Mount Mary College, I continued honing my sewing skills and developing as an artist. There I discovered two important things that would shape my sewing future. First, I learned couture sewing techniques – skills that still serve me today and help me to achieve quality results. Secondly, I learned to quilt. We were assigned a project to design a “piece-work” sewing process. One person stitches one part and passes it to the next person. They add another part, pass it on and so forth until the item is complete. I designed a quilt top, and my classmates selected my quilt as one of the two projects we would execute. The completed quilts were then donated to an area nursing home. And from that college assignment, my love of quilting was born. I also won the Gimbel’s Most Promising Designer Scholarship award, a very prestigious honor.

After college I continued to sew, but life intervened and, well, I had to do something to pay the rent, and sewing and quilting took a backseat to other responsibilities. Then, one day at my “day job” a friend and colleague, Cindy, brought in a quilt she had made at her quilt guild. Seeing her beautiful quilt stirred all those dormant quilter feelings within me. I attended the next quilt guild meeting, joined the group, and never looked back. Since that day I have created and designed numerous quilts for family and friends. I have donated many quilts to charities and have sold a few too.

I have lived in the Midwest, on the east coast, and now in my current home in Missouri. All along the way, I created quilts, designed quilts and collected fabric. In 2019, I purchased a previously-owned Gammill-Statler long arm quilting machine. Originally indecisive about the purchase, I talked it over with my good friend, Helen. I’ll never forget the joy in her voice when she said, “Oh Mary, it will take your quilting to a whole new level!”. Well, my friend Helen is never wrong. I have discovered a whole new level of the quilting experience and it’s very exciting! I sincerely hope you will join me on my quilting journey and follow my new blog.

It is my desire to provide high quality quilting services and beautiful quilt patterns. If you love quilting and are looking for a new project, check out my patterns. If your quilt top is complete and you are looking, for a high-quality finished quilt, I would be honored to have the opportunity to enhance the work you have done by adding my long arm quilting services. Not a sewer? That’s ok. Consider purchasing one of my finished quilts or, contact me to discuss a one-of-a-kind custom quilt. TEST