As an artist, Judy Mullen has literally reached the top of the world — one small, intricately shaped and delicately cut little piece of fabric at a time.

What brought her to the prestigious international stage is the 1980s-created quilting specialty called wearable art.

It was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, in 2007 where she achieved the creme de la creme award in quilting. The prize she received for her creation — a jacket with appliqued seams — was the year’s top-of-the-line Bernina sewing machine. This “made to create” quilting model can command several thousand dollars.

“It was their very top model that year,” she said of her prize.

“So, yeah, it was exciting,” the lifelong quilter recalled, the enthusiasm still ringing in her voice.

Mullen is no stranger to winning awards. A number of her fabric masterpieces have won her national awards as well as regional and local honors. The Manteca Mayor’s Art Council named her Artist of the Year for her wearable art creation she called “Grace Comes in Silken Splendour,” a pull-on ensemble consisting of pants, tunic, waist wrap, and a hat.

Mullin is the featured artist at the 40th annual Manteca Quilt and Cloth Doll Show taking place Saturday, March 2, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, March 3, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the San Joaquin Office of Education’s Wentworth Building, 2707 Transworld Drive, off of Arch Road near Highway 99 in Stockton. Admission is $7 for one day and $10 for both days. Children ages 12 and under are free. More than 100 quilts, soft dolls and wearable arts will be on display.

Not surprisingly, the clothes she wears are handmade by her. “Except for two garments,” she qualified, that she makes for special fashion shows. She doesn’t wear them “because I don’t wear a size six!” she said with a laugh.

What happens to her special handmade clothing pieces? They are either sold or given to family and/or close friends. “I’ve done both. I’ve given away so many of my quilts, and pieces of art that I made as gifts.”

A friend for whom she makes a jacket “every now and then” always gets “hysterical” when she gets to wear Mullen’s original creations.

Winning awards, gift giving, or selling her quilts and wearable art pieces are not the only things that Mullen enjoys about her passion. She likes to share this practical art pursuit with other people of all ages. One way she does that is by holding what she calls a “trunk show.” She gets invited by quilt groups or women’s groups to do that. She does two trunk shows a year — one that features all quilts, and the other where she shows her wearable art projects.

“I have 30 garments that I bring,” she said. But she does not model them. “A lady just holds them up and walks around the room. It’s a lot of fun.”

She has brought these trunk shows “basically, in Northern California,” but has shown one in San Diego.

When Mullen is not holding these trunk shows, she teaches classes in quilting and wearable art.

Several years ago, she took courses in judging, further expanding her fabric-art experience.

“I judge quilt shows in fairs for quilts and wearable art. It’s really fun to do the judging,” she said.

She remembers well how “wearable art” became the rage. Up until the 1980s, this way of making clothes was simply referred to as “decorative sewing,” she said.

“Then everybody got a fancy name” for everything. Office clerks became “administrative assistants” instead of secretary. In clothing, decorative sewing became “wearable art. And that’s how it happened,” said Mullen who is one of the charter members of the 40-year-old Manteca Quilters Guild for which she has served, each for three years, as president and Manteca Quilters and Doll Show chairperson.

How it all started

“It all started just with my mother teaching me how to make doll clothes,” Mullen said, describing how she caught the sewing bug. The quilting came later in the 1970s, when her service club — the Manteca Junior Women’s — was active in arranging and organizing art activities and exhibits in the old A-Frame building that was then located just across from the Manteca Public Library where the murals are located today on the south side of the Frontier phone building. The A-Frame now serves as a classroom at the Manteca Unified School District property’s old Adult School along East North Street. The district owns the entire block bordered by Sutter, Sherman, Lincoln and East North streets.

Mullen’s mother was not a quilter, “but she was a good seamstress,” she said. She made all the clothes that she and her sister wore. But that was only until Mullen learned to sew and started making her own dresses. This was when she was in high school.

There were quilting classes offered on campus too and she took advantage of them, but not because she was really interested. “I didn’t want to get in trouble talking, so I took up sewing,” she laughed.

That was in Denver, Colorado, where she grew up. “I loved it,” she said of her sewing and quilting classes.

Mullen moved to California after she met and married her husband, Gene, who taught science classes for 38 years at East Union High School. He first taught for two years at Manteca High, and when the East Union campus opened, he was one of the first faculty members to teach there. Both are University of the Pacific alumni. They have two children and five grandchildren. Daughter Cindy Esenwein is an art teacher at Manteca High. She and her husband have one daughter, Sophie.

Son Rick, who was an athlete at Manteca High, is the pastor of his church in Kansas. He and his wife have two sons and two daughters. One of the girls, 14-year-old Claire, has inherited her grandmother’s quilting genes.

“She’s my seamstress. She makes quilts and garments every year.”

She has also inherited her grandmother’s winning streak. She has been entering her quilt and garment pieces at the 4-H county fair every year, and “she wins all the time,” her grandmother said.

Since she was seven years old, she has won each time in her age group, Mullen said with pride. “She’s really good.”

Granddaughter Sophie Esenwein, a junior at Manteca High, also “knows how to sew” but is not interested in pursuing the activity as avidly as her grandmother.

Actually, while it was Mullen’s mother who got her started in sewing that later developed into quilting, her talent was born way, way before then. Back in the 1920s, 1930s.

“I’ve sewn since I was a kid, making doll clothes until high school. It was a natural thing for me to do,” Mullen said.

Then her mother told her about her maternal great-grandmother in Iowa, who died two days before Mullen was born.

“She was a master quilter. If you saw her quilt, you wouldn’t believe she made them. She was really a superb quilter,” an awed Mullen said about the great-grandmother she never met.

“Ever since my mother told me that, I thought, maybe that is why I sew,” she concluded.