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Flo Calhoun is a quilter in Corvallis. Born in North Dakota to Austria-Hungarian immigrants, Calhoun moved to Oregon in 2005 and joined the Mary River Quilt Guild shortly thereafter. Although her grandmother never explicitly taught her to quilt, Calhoun learned by observing her grandmother’s techniques. In 1976 she started quilting and developed her skills by trial and error. Calhoun also taught herself to crochet, knit, and make braided rugs. In the 1990s she began to quilt in earnest. She specializes in highly embroidered quilts, which she has shown at show in Oregon as well as at the highly competitive American Quilter's Society show in Paducah, Kentucky. She also participates in various group-quilting projects. Calhoun, who related that she follows a Midwestern quilting tradition, uses a Bernina sewing machine for its speed and power. She really likes to enhance her quilts with appliqué, a decorative technique that involves stitching pieces of fabric onto the quilt top to create a variety of designs, from flowers to barns, rivers, fish, and abstract shapes. In terms of shapes, Calhoun particularly loves circles, and, despite the monotony of making them, she often incorporates them into her designs. One of Calhoun’s favorite kinds of quilts are known as “crazy quilts,” a style popularized in the late-19th century that involves her using decorative stitching to join small and irregularly-shaped pieces into squares or other shapes. Calhoun notes that this style of quilt follows a spider web pattern. She also stitches intricately decorated quilted wall hangings, which she regards more as art works then the bed quilts she makes. Flo Calhoun sews mostly for her family, and all her grandchildren have their own quilts. She also makes quilts that get distributed through the service committee of the Mary River Quilt Guild to organizations like ABC House, a child-abuse intervention center in Albany.