T H Q U I L O P H T H A L A friendly greeting from the
reception desk is to be
expected, but visitors to
Linda Burk’s ophthalmology
offices are surprised to also
be welcomed by colorful,
handmade quilts adorning the walls. They're
certainly conversation starters, but they
serve a purpose for her practice.
“I display them in the office because I
want patients to see the bright colors after
One of 75 fans on Dr. Burk’s first quilt
their cataracts have been removed,” she
says. More than 20 quilts are displayed at
pieces. Fortunately, my mother volunteered to
her large Beckley Avenue office, while the
hand quilt it.”
North Dallas office has room for only a few.
Dr. Burk and John Gilmore, MD, an
She hangs her favorites on the wall directly
otolaryngologist, married and were raising their
behind the patient’s seat, so she has a
three children before she had time to return to
pleasing background while she works.
her passion.
Dr. Burk’s simple patterns she followed to
“I had to do something while supervising the
sew clothes at age six progressed to complex
homework,” she says. “Think of the hours we
quilting patterns after medical school. She
spend waiting for our kids at practices. I spent
made her first quilt from pieces of cotton
more than 10 years watching them on the iceskating
skirts she’d made in medical school.
rink before school.”
“The quilt pattern was Grandmother’s
As empty-nesters and without children’s
Fan, and I still have the cardboard template
lessons and activities, Dr. Burk remains a
that I designed. It was tedious to cut all the
multitasker.
“Now, my special talent is pinning the pieces
while walking on the elliptical,” she says. “A
quilting project gets me out of bed in the
morning and on the elliptical, and 60 minutes
later, I’ve burned 500 calories and have a large
stack of pieces ready to run through the sewing
machine when I get home from work. I always
try to have a stack to pin when I’m on the
elliptical and a stack to sew if I can’t sleep or if
I’m procrastinating.
“I can do a lot of problem solving while
sewing, or I watch surgical videos or those of
The Great Courses, ‘visiting’ all the national
parks. I’ve also improved my Spanish by
listening to tapes and watching videos.”
At any one time, Dr. Burk has 10 quilts in
various stages of completion, each project in its
own stackable strawberry cardboard crate from
the fruit department at Sam’s. In the quilt world,
This Grandmother’s Fan quilt was Dr. Burk’s
these are known as UFOs, UnFinished Objects.
first completed quilt.
Of the 100 or so quilts she’s completed, some
14 Dallas Medical Journal December 2018