By Kim Baird

Mary Ann Odegard grew up in Fargo. When she married George Waxler in 1947, she moved to his farm near Mapleton, ND. There Mary Ann and George raised two daughters, Nancy and Kathy.

Mary Ann was one of the charter members of the Quilters’ Guild of North Dakota (now known as Fargo Moorhead Quilters). She always volunteered for activities and events. She served as President, taught many workshops, was always working at the quilt show. Mary Ann invented the Bodacious Bazaar Booth, where we sold many quilts and related items to raise some funds.

For years she contributed a column to our newsletter called It Seams to Me, in which she expressed her many opinions, always with a touch of humor to take out any sting in her words.

Before that, Mary Ann drew a series of dozens of cartoons for the newsletter featuring Sunbonnet Sue.

Her most famous one showed a chain gang of Sues in striped uniforms, captioned “They touched the quilts at the quilt show.” This one went viral even before the World Wide Web, appearing all over the world in several quilted versions. None of the copies credited her, but she didn’t mind.

This is just one of many quilts based on Mary Ann’s SuzyQ Cartoons. “Chain Gang” by Rosalie Gray, exhibited at Quilts Kingston 2008. It won first place in a humorous quilt challenge at this show in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

I have so many fond memories of Mary Ann. We quilted together around the frame every year at Pioneer Days at Bonanzaville. She helped at many of the Discovery Days for our state quilt documentation project in the 1980’s. Actually, it’s hard to recall any guild event that didn’t include her participation. I always called her the youngest old lady I knew. Like the Energizer bunny, she just kept going and going!

Mary Ann loves to hand quilt. She considered that the authentic way to make a quilt, and she made many! But she never became an old fuddy-duddy. She joined Designing Quilters and proceeded to show us how creative she could be. She had at least one quilt in every DQ exhibit over the years. I think she was the first of us to print photos onto fabric and use them in quilts. In fact, she taught herself to use a computer and even taught others. I can’t remember her ever being afraid to try anything.