05/16/2026
Our hearts are heavy with grief today. Our dear friend and colleague Kathy Rieger passed this morning after a brief illness. As many of you know, Kathy was a huge part of our Early Girl family. She has worked with us since we opened. She worked most Sundays and was the facilitator of our Sew What Club on Friday nights, as well as the coordinator of our retreats that we host twice a year. She was retired from Haddonfield High School where she was a math teacher who is fondly remembered by her students. She taught many popular classes in our shop, including her Table Runner of the Month class and her T shirt quilt class. She had a following of loyal students who would sign up for a class just because she was teaching it. She was extremely generous...not just with gifts but with her time and energy. She made so many beautiful quilts, and made samples of some of our best selling kits at the shop. She was such a strong part of our team that Sharon and I tried hard to protect her by not asking too much of her...because she would always say yes to whatever we asked, even though she was a very busy person.
She was a loyal friend. She was always looking out for her friends. She loved to talk on the phone, and could be counted on to talk you through any quilty problems you might be having. She was a night owl, staying up late many nights sewing into the wee hours of the morning. You could call her late at night when your sewing machine was acting up, and she would talk you off the ledge and offer helpful suggestions.
As coordinator of our quilt retreats, she would put hours of planning into our retreats to make them special. She would put baskets on each table, overflowing with treats to sustain us as we sewed. She would sew or make amazing favors for 50 attendees at each retreat, and they were always very special. She would put great effort into planning the seating charts so that each attendees would be with others whose company they would enjoy. If she didn't personally know the attendees, she would stalk them on Facebook and Instagram to see who thier friends were and what thier interests were so she could seat them accordingly.
She was a great pattern tester for our mystery quilts and shop patterns. As a math teacher she was great at catching errors and doing all your quilty math. She has been a huge part of our shop's success over the years.
Many of our customers will remember her from the Little Shop in Haddonfield, where she worked before Early Girl came into being. She was working there the first time I ever walked into a quilt shop and bought fabric, and was kind and friendly to me as a first time quilter. I can still picture her with her polo shirt and her hand in her pocket, smiling and asking questions about what I was making.
She was extremely humble. She disliked receiving compliments and she dodged getting her picture taken- most of my pictures of her show her ducking out of sight.
Early Girl was one of her happy places. She loved working here, and loved being part of our quilting family. She also loved going down the shore, and she loved her vacations in Wildwood. She was also a Disney fan, and Disney World was another happy place for her.
But her happiest place of all was home with her family. She kept her family close and was a loving sister to Karen and John, dedicated wife to Bill, a great mother to Bill Jr, Tommy, and Jennifer, mother-in-law to Kristyn and Katie, and an amazing Mimi to TJ, Trevor, Tanner, Kenly, Heidi, Will, Lily and John. Her family was her heart and she made many meals, many quilts and many gifts for them all. She talked about them all the time at our shop and it was very clear how much she loved each and every one of them. Our hearts go out to the family and we share your love and warm memories of such a wonderful, WONDERFUL woman. Kathy you are already missed very dearly. Thank you for your friendship and your love.
