By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Some crazy quilts are crazier than others.

Some are crazy only in a genteel, mildly eccentric, talking-to-themselves-quietly-in-the-corner kind of way unlikely to frighten children or attract the attention of the social services.

Mary Long’s crazy quilts, on the other hand, have a full-blown, slobbering case of the out-of-your-gourd, mad-as-a-hatter, she-on-honeydew-hath-fed bonkers going on. They elicit shrieks of astonishment and delight even as eyes cross, senses overload and smoke curls up from sizzling brains. They depict, in insane detail, stars and moons and red and green parrots and orange-striped cats and a pot of daisies and a ghost saying, “Boo.” And that’s just one corner.

Ms. Long defines crazy quilts as those that don’t have a method to their madness. “You just put things every which way,” she explained. 

In her case, it is impossible not to observe that she has taken the thing to the extreme. Words and even photography are helpless to capture the flavor of her quilts, the zaniness of their humor and the richness of their texture. At a minimum, Ms. Long embroiders every square before sewing it into the matrix, and many squares contain extra pieces of fabric sewed on. Or crochet work. Or buttons. Or all of the above.

And yet Ms. Long does not consider herself a serious quilter. “I take spells,” she said. “I did this while my mother was sick.” Working on each incredibly ornate square gave her restless fingers something to do while she sat beside the sickbed, she said. “I just like to do things with my hands,” she said. “I’m tactile, that’s all.”

In between quilting spells, Ms. Long takes up one art or craft after another, painting, crocheting, beading, modeling, using as her raw materials scraps of cloths from yard sales or plastic bags from grocery stores or those tiny whiskey bottles served on airplanes. “When there’s another craft that comes along, I want to know how to do it,” she said. “But I get bored then and when I see something else, I want to do that.”  

The one unifying theme throughout her work is its maniacal and thrilling intricacy of detail. An inch-across sunhat crocheted from Ingles-bag plastic is festooned with microscopic roses, ribbons and a tiny stuffed bird. One of her two-inch-high handmade dolls clutches, for some reason, a to-scale Rice Krispies box, and Ms. Long lifts the doll’s skirts to reveal prim and perfect undies in size extra-petite.

Perhaps the best example of Ms. Long’s tendency toward what we will call, if we may, the complete is a little summerhouse she carved from a gourd. Roofed with pinecone thatching, the gourd gazebo has a hinged door that opens and shuts to reveal, inside: a grill, a lawn chair, a potted plant, a stove, a table, and birds perching here and there. “That little lantern did work until the battery died,” she said.

And a baseball-style cap she made from scraps illustrates her tendency toward what we might without injustice call the over-complete. The hat features quilting, embroidery, flowers, faces, and a Spanish lady with itty-bitty earrings sewed on, plus a crocheted wool sweater (with buttons), the whole surmounted by a towering garnish of mistletoe. “I wear it when I want kisses,” said Ms. Long.

Ms. Long, a native of Illinois, took a few painting courses in college but spent most of her life as a housewife. She and her career-Navy husband raised their three children in California but often visited his relatives on Sand Mountain. “Those were long, long trips and I would do this kind of stuff on the trips,” she said. 

The Longs decided to make Sand Mountain their home when they retired 22 years ago.

Ms. Long started teaching crafts at the Dade County Senior Center after the death of her husband last year. “I’m just getting started with doing things again, just one thing after another,” she said. 

Ms. Long teaches at the center Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9:30 until lunchtime. Currently she is helping the seniors make a “memory quilt,” each working on individual squares. She had plans to begin a painting class this week.

“There really is so much to offer here, if people will just take advantage of it,” she said.