EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY: QUILTER LAURA CREWS-LEWIS REAPS NATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR HER SEWING

A story based in historical research and told with an interior designer's aesthetic sense hides within and literally behind each quilt Laura Crews-Lewis makes.

Crews-Lewis, a nationally recognized quilter, can relate the genesis of each one.

A Gothic-theme quilt, for instance, came about because she had a scrap of material that included grapes. "Grapes represent communion," she begins.

From there, the quilt blossomed into a stylized representation of Gothic Christianity, employing Easter lilies, and symbols of the trinity, the apostles and the Gospels. The fleur-de-lis is found throughout.

Crews-Lewis' background in interior design she owned her own firm in Cape Girardeau for 28 years is evident in her quilts.

"All my interior design training shows up, more than at any other time in my life," she says.

"You're not going to go into all that with a client."

One of her best-known quilts, "Pineapple on the Post," evolved from the common occurrence of finding the sweet and sour fruit in finials and other design applications. "When you're aware of it you see it right and left," she said.

In her research, Crews-Lewis discovered that pineapples were considered symbols of hospitality by the seafaring men of New England, who often returned to port bearing a cargo of the then-precious fruit.

The men usually required an immediate period of reacquainting themselves with their kin, but then would place a pineapple on their gatepost as a signal that they were ready to receive guests.

This story is printed on the back of the quilt, a characteristic of Crews-Lewis' work.

The deep blue quilt she produced is festooned with pineapples that are both appliqued and quilted, and made three dimensional through a technique called stuffing."

"The quilting is really the jewelry of the work," Crews-Lewis says.

Some of Crews-Lewis' work is featured in the September issue of Traditional Quilter magazine.

"Her quilts stop viewers in their tracks," the writer observes, continuing that, "I nearly gasped when I first set eyes on her "Pineapple on the Post."

That quilt won a prize in a competition at Woodlawn Plantation, Va., home of one of the country's largest quilt shows. It took more than 1,700 hours to complete, and has been appraised at nearly $4,000.

But Crews-Lewis' quilts are not for sale. She plans to donate them to a museum someday.

"Pineapple on the Post" and other quilts, including "Chinese Summary" and "Beautiful Balloons," have won a total of 47 ribbon awards. "Beautiful Balloons," only the second quilt she ever made, won best of show and was purchased by the American Quilter's Society Museum in Paducah.

Her third quilt also won best of show in a competition, a string of successes that hasn't been easy to maintain. "I got spoiled," she says.

Since retiring as an interior designer, most of Crews-Lewis' time has been devoted to quilting. "I'd been in the design business 45 years," she said. "You get out of the job and you still have that creative urge. What do you do with it?"

Her mother, Clara Hensley, taught her handiwork as a child, and through high school home economics classes Crews-Lewis developed seamstress abilities. But being snowbound in the Blizzard of 1979 24 inches of snow fell turned her into a quilter.

"For three days I did nothing but cut and coordinate blocks for the `The Flower Garden,'" she said. That was her first quilt. It did nothing in competition, but she attended the show and was inspired by what other people were doing.

Crews-Lewis often watches TV out of the corner of her eye while she quilts. She used to listen to classical music, but that caused problems.

"When (the music) got fast I'd just go to ripping, and when it slowed down I'd go at a snail pace," she said.

Now her work has evolved to the likes of "Chinese Summary," a complexly devised quilt that incorporates the colors and pictures that transmitted the Chinese language before characters were invented.

It includes a dragon (symbol of excellence), the character Shou, who incarnates the wish for a long life, and the pomegranate, symbol of joy.

The quilt would make a good birthday card, Crews-Lewis observes in her explanation.

"Put the character Shou and the symbols together and you have a wish for a long life filled with prosperity, many sons and much happiness."

A wall quilt in the Twin Lakes home she shares with her husband of 26 years, retired Army Col. James Lewis, is named "Great Balls of Fire" because it employs an age-old pattern called pyrotechnics. "It has nothing to do with the Jerry Lee Lewis film. He's not even kin," she jokes.

Not all of Crews-Lewis' work is studiously serious. She can pull out a quilt depicting two young society women in New Orleans. Both are adorned with real human hair and their faces have been painted. There's even a flea on a cat. Such a quilt would have no chance at a competition, she said.

And Crews-Lewis likes to compete. "It wouldn't be any fun at all if I just had them hanging around the house," she said.

She belongs to three international quilting groups and enters seven or eight competitions each year.

But winning awards isn't the reason she quilts.

"I made them to inspire people," she said.

Her newest quilt is a French design from the Louis XVI era, and its bucolic theme is influenced as well by Jean Jacques Rousseau's social views, particularly his idealization of rural life.

She herself once envisioned a day when she would retire from interior design to a rocker and quilting in the Ozarks. But now, if she isn't quilting, she's lecturing about quilts or teaching how to make them.

"Anybody can do it really if you have natural capabilities," she said.

She has no problem summoning the approximately one year of patience required to produce one of her quilts. "If you like the way a project is turning out, you're really fired up," she said.

Her quilting rule of thumb:

"If something isn't done well, pull it out and do it over. You'll never be a success otherwise."