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Daily Planet Correspondent 

What proper dreamer raised on fairy tales and Horatio Alger wouldn’t want to live in a castle? Unfortunately, however, castles aren’t quite as romantic as the Narnia-esque ideal; on the whole they’re big, drafty, stone fortresses. So unless you build your own (like Elvis Presley, for example, who sat in a plush, overstuffed throne shaped like a monkey and adorned his citadel with decor befitting a man who enjoyed peanut butter and bacon sandwiches), you’ll probably need some wall coverings to cut the chill. 

The subsequent development of central heating and thermal underwear hasn’t detracted one iota of the grandeur a comely wall covering can bring to a room. And if you get 60-plus comely wall coverings into a room -– well that would really be something. 

For a month of every year, the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library is inundated with the cream of the East Bay’s quilt-making crop. The annual quilt show, kicked off 21 years back by librarians Starr LaTronica and Phyllis Partridge, transforms the relatively tiny library into the United Nations of quilts, as the exposition features of every style, shape, size and background imaginable. 

“Unlike many quilt shows, we’re not juried, we’ll accept anything,” says Debbie Carton, an 11-year librarian and one of the North Branch’s several “quilt mavens.” 

“We wedged in 60 (quilts) this year. That’s about all we can handle.” 

And that’s no understatement. Quilts – some easily large enough to comfortably cover Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – hang from virtually every available wall and rafter in the library, and even take up windows and a display case. 

“It’s gotten bigger and bigger, and I’m seeing more diversity among the types of quilts submitted and the types of quilters submitting things,” says Carton of the show’s evolution over the past decade. “One year we had a whole bunch of quilts from the Japanese American Senior Center of the East Bay, this year we have a few from Ebony Threads, an African-American quilting group. We also have three quilts made by teen-agers, and that’s pretty much unheard of. 

“We’re seeing more quilts as art rather than craft,” continues Carton, a quilter herself. “The small pieces are created as artwork rather than something to cuddle under. The materials are more exotic and fragile; the purpose is to delight the eye rather than be a bedspread.” 

It is possible, however, to do both. Every quilt comes with a story – yet since we can’t tell you 60-odd stories unless we shrink the type or begin printing in the margins, we’ll have to abbreviate ourselves: 

• If an award were to be handed out for heaviest quilt, Kazue Granich’s “Puff Quilt” would win, hands down. Constructed of 1,444 strawberry-sized “puff balls” (38 in length, 38 in width), the colorful quilt weighs in at over 20 pounds, and, in Carton’s words, would be a bad idea to stand under it in the event of an earthquake. 

• “Edith’s Secret,” loaned by quiltmaker/collector Lu Sweeny is certainly the oldest of the bunch, having been completed way back in 1860. The completely handmade gem was obtained from the estate of Professor Edith Pickard, and sat, for years, in Sweeny’s mother-in-law’s closet. 

• “Log Cabin,” crafted by UC Berkeley student Monique Berger, provides viewers with an impromptu history lesson. Crafted from 1930s-style prints and featuring a tiny, Pepto Bismol-pink scrap from a dress belonging to Berger’s grandmother, the black squares at the center of the “log cabin” strips hearken back to the days of the Underground Railroad. A quilt featuring black center squares hanging in a window or on a clothesline was utilized to indicate a safe house for runaway slaves. 

• It took 10 years of work and three decades of life experience for Gwen McMillan to craft her entry, “Around the World in 30 Years.” The quilt features dozens of separate, ornate panels representing the countries the globetrotting McMillan visited between 1965 and 1995. “Every design is contained in its square except for the Chinese dragon,” observes Carton of the fiery red, snake-like dragon spilling into several neighboring panels. “You can’t keep a dragon in one place.” 

• Some quilts come with bittersweet stories. “Garden Path” was a gift to a gardening enthusiast unable to partake in his favorite hobby because he was suffering through chemotherapy. The deep forest green quilt is punctuated by bright, spring colors, reminiscent of a lovely garden. The quilt also features a flannel backing, so it could be used to provide warmth on a dark, cold day. “I think he got a lot of use out of it before he died,” says Carton. 

The 21st Annual Quilt Show continues until May 7 at the North Branch Library at 1170 The Alameda. For more information, call 510-644-6850 or check out www.infopeople.org/bpl