THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607180137
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 71 lines
These are hands so rough-hewn Michelangelo might have chiseled them from a block of marble.
The muscles of the shipyard machinist's forearms are thick as a boatswain's rope, and the lines of tattoos melt their indigo into tanned and weathered skin.
Tony Cipriano's fingers carefully weave a fine embroidery needle in and out through layers of red and blue calico and fluffy white batting, defining the delicate puffs and pillows of a quilt.
Cipriano, 63, is learning to quilt. He's enrolled, along with five women, in an eight-week, Monday evening course at Quilt Country Fabrics in the Hilltop East shopping center.
The six-square sampler wall hanging that Cipriano has embarked on will be a gift for his wife, Phyllis, when it's completed in two weeks.
``My wife wants a quilt to hang in the TV room,'' said Cipriano, arranging pieces of the petite-print fabric to see how they look together. He smooths the swatches, then leans back to consider the effect. ``So I'm going to make her one.''
The soft fabrics and fine thread Cipriano is working with are a far cry from the hard metal of torpedo tubes and nuclear reactors he's used to handling at his shipyard job. He has dismantled aircraft carrier components and repaired nuclear valves. But working with his hands is what he likes to do best.
Puzzles, for example, are another of his passions. Just now, he's snipping errant threads from the edges of a tissue-thin blue and pink print applique heart that will form the centerpiece of a Great Grandmother's Flower Garden patchwork square.
``Quilting is like a puzzle in many ways,'' says quilt class instructor Ethel Guerrero, who lives in Chesapeake.
Quilting may be new to Cipriano, but using a needle and thread is not. He's been sewing for 34 years. He learned how to take a stitch in time out of necessity when he discovered that his wife didn't know how.
``I was trying to make some shorts, but I didn't have the patience,'' explained Phyllis Cipriano. ``He took over and finished them.''
One of Tony Cipriano's first sewing projects was cutting down a pair of his own pants to fit one of his young sons. That was when his wife told him, `` `You know, they've got patterns for this,' '' he said.
Then, when he couldn't find ready-made drapes to fit a patio door, Cipriano bought some fabric and custom made them himself.
Soon he had become so interested in what is usually considered woman's work - or play - that he signed up for lessons and bought himself a sewing machine.
He made clothes for his children as they grew, and even stitched up a fancy dress for his wife - a black one with cloth-covered buttons.
Eventually, Cipriano wore out two sewing machines.
Guerrero, an accomplished quilt artist who enjoys teaching others the craft, was so surprised by the prospect of having a man in her quilting class that she felt it prudent to consult ``the ladies'' who'd already signed up. None objected.
``It's not just women who quilt,'' said Guerrero, showing her students how to cut plastic template squares and triangles to assure uniformity of the patchwork pieces. She pointed out that some of the best-known craft quilters are men.
Before he has completed the 16-hour seminar, Tony Cipriano will know how to fit together the geometric pieces of the ``churndash'' and the ``shoefly,'' two pattern blocks used in quilting. He'll know, too, how to ``miter'' a corner - or square off a coverlet's right angle - professionally.
``He does curtains for me,'' Phyllis Cipriano said. ``He just has a lot of patience, but he has been complaining about those little quilting needles.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON
Tony Cipriano, 63, learns quilting at Quilt Country Fabrics at
Hilltop East. Beside him is Bethany Eluk of Virginia Beach. by CNB