New Gild offers expert pearl and bead restringing that’s suitable for your finest pieces, and we do this with the help of marvelous local stringer, Ann Pickens!

Ann’s pre-retirement career was as a labor and delivery nurse, and she helped to deliver over 2000 babies during her career. As a serious hobby, Ann quilts extraordinary pieces using her own unique color combinations and adaptations of traditional patterns, and last but by no means least, also does stringing. Her experiences have developed her no-nonsense problem-solving skills as well as her artistic and creative talents, which combine to make her the right woman for any stringing task! Here, we ask Ann a few questions:

That’s a lot of babies! What’s your craziest delivery anecdote?

I remember calling one obstetrician about 2am, and telling him to come quick for a delivery. He paused for a second and said, “You mean right now?” I got the poor man out of a dead sleep, and I had a lot of fun over the years teasing him about that.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota, Fairmont, where we pretty much ran free all summer. There was a movie (always a western) on Saturday afternoons. The movie cost 9 cents and the popcorn was 12 cents. (I’m old!) We moved to Falcon Heights when I was 13. My mother had taught elementary school before she was married, but in those days was prohibited from teaching after marriage. My dad was District Manager for the Fairmont Railway Motors – the biggest employer in town. He started a year or two after high school as an office boy and worked his way up, ultimately working there for 47 years.

Tell us about your quilting addiction!

I’ve been sewing since I was old enough to hold a needle. For decades, I made garments for myself and my children. After I retired from nursing, I had a part time job at a fabric store, and I saw quilts made by my coworkers and others and became intrigued by the possibilities of combining different colors in different configurations. I think color and music are two of our greatest gifts, and there are infinite possible combinations for those colors. I give most of my quilts away. I make baby quilts that I’ve given to STEP (a food shelf) and Bundles of Love (a local organization that gives baby necessities to needy new moms) and “comfort quilts”I give to people facing surgery, the loss of a loved one, or other hardships.

What got you into stringing?

While I was still nursing, I had a part-time job at a jewelry store. Several times during that period, a customer brought in a simple bracelet of sterling silver beads and crystals that she had broken. I gave it a close look and figured out how to repair it. That led the store owner to send me to the person who did his stringing to instruct me on attaching a clasp to a strand of pearls, and my stringing gig was born.

Tell us about your most intense stringing job!

I once repaired an elaborate collar made of unbelievably tiny ruby, blue and yellow sapphire and emerald beads. It was a nightmare, complicated by the fact that some of the beads were missing. I applied my design skills and made it work.

Whew! We’ll give you the last word:

I also like to knit; the only thing I knit is scarves, which I donate to STEP, the local food shelf. I’m currently working on scarf number 2064!