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Rose Hahn's first quilt, which she stitched for her son, took her four years to create. Still, she entered it in a competition at The Great Frederick Fair and it took Best in Show. About 200 quilts later, she can now turn one out in just a few months.

Hahn, a 61-year-old Frederick native, is retired from Hartz and Co., where she made patterns for men's suits, and now does quilting pretty much full time. She is the creative mind behind two quilts hanging in the C. Burr Artz Public Library in downtown Frederick and one at the Thurmont Regional Library. Another one of her pieces will soon be placed at Urbana Regional Library.

The quilt, called "Book Buddies," features well-known children's book characters such as Curious George, The Cat in the Hat and Arthur. It will be hung sometime in the next few weeks and a ceremony at 10:30 a.m., on Dec. 4 will celebrate Hahn and the women from her quilting club who helped design some of the quilt's pieces.

"Ever since I've known Rose, she's very artistic and creative. Beautiful workmanship," said Pat James, an Urbana Regional Library associate and member of the quilting club.

Erin Dingle, branch manager at the Thurmont Regional Library, feels the same way about the custom quilt that hangs there.

"Frederick County Public Libraries wants to bring more than just books to people," she said. "We want to bring culture and we consider this a beautiful piece of local art and something that people are going to enjoy for many, many years."

The quilt was commissioned and paid for by the C. Burr Artz Trust and features Thurmont's iconic water tower, farmland and a variety of indigenous animals, Dingle said.

"Because we reflect the agricultural community and nature ... we wanted to reflect that in the quilt," she said. "She put a lot of thought into it."

Hahn said that, in addition to carefully creating the design of the Thurmont quilt, which took a little more than a year to make, she was also selective about the stitching patterns. She used only stitches that were invented before 1940, and tried to choose ones with names that incorporated agriculture and nature such as the "Turkey Tracks" stitch, the "Barn Raising" stitch and the "Ducks in a Pond" stitch.

"I really enjoy doing the research" behind the quilts, said Hahn, who has also studied topics such as spiderwebs, birds and even the origins of downtown Frederick's architecture for her pieces.

But Hahn's quilts aren't just locally appreciated. Her pieces hang in private collections in Europe, have traveled with exhibitions and won numerous awards at quilt shows across the country. She has also written books and pieces for magazines and periodicals about quilting and regularly travels to speak at conventions. Her specialty is the appliqué technique, which allows her more creative freedom with the quilts, she said.

Despite her acclaim, Hahn still finds time to do local projects. In fact, her biggest achievement, literally, was a 26 feet by 40 feet quilt that was used as a stage backdrop for the 1992 Frederick Community College production of "Quilters."

She is now working on a private project with the Just Us Club, a group of nine local quilters that meets once per month, and is in the beginning stages of designing another quilt for the C. Burr Artz library, which she expects will be completed in the spring.

Hahn said she has not stopped quilting since 1977, when her sister first showed her how, and she probably never will. She has several "UFOs," a quilter's term meaning "unfinished objects," that she'd like to get around to completing. Aside from her personal projects, she hopes to create even more quilts for Frederick County Public Libraries. Perhaps an "Alice in Wonderland" or "Tom Sawyer" quilt will one day grace the walls of the C. Burr Artz children's section, next to her "Wizard of Oz" piece, she said.

All things considered, it's clear that the community regards Hahn's work as more than just bed covers, and so does she.

"Actually, I don't even have a quilt for my bed," she said.

E-mail Courtney Pomeroy at cpomeroy@gazette.net.