The word ”quilt” brings different images to mind for everyone.
Some remember snuggling under one on a cold winter night. Others reminisce about hours spent stitching one with friends, remembering thoughts, recipes and conversations that passed over and around the quilting frame.
And for others, that old quilt in the spare bedroom may simply be nothing more than a colorful blanket, patiently waiting to envelop a weary guest in its folds.
But just a glimpse at the heritage that lies beneath quilting quickly elevates the end product into a category all its own, and the definition that ensues most definitely does not contain the word ”blanket.”
”I kind of cringe a little when people refer to (quilts) as blankets,”
admitted Lynn Rice, owner of A Touch of Amish in Barrington, a shop specializing in Amish quilts, fabrics, supplies and quilting classes. ”It represents an old American craft, so it makes you feel like you`re a little bit of history when you make one. There`s always a little bit more put into it than just a blanket.”
”When you make a quilt from a traditional pattern, it`s almost as if the thousands of women who made that same pattern are looking over your shoulder,” said Amy Dryfoos, president of Village Quilters of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. ”Somehow the presence of all that quilting that went on in the past is there and you feel it. It runs the whole spectrum of social classes and ages.”
Indeed, consider the growing number of shops dedicated to quilting. Count the volume of guilds that focus on these fabric creations. Then add in the membership of those guilds. Nowhere is the growth more apparent than in the suburbs, where those with a passion for quilting pursue their craft and fuel a mini-boom in quilting-related businesses. In fact, three of the largest guilds, Northwest Suburban Quilters Guild, Prairie Star Quilters Guild and Illinois Quilters Inc., are based in the suburbs, with each boasting 300 or more members.
No one knows for sure just when quilting was invented. All crafts grew out of need, often at the same time in different parts of the world.
First there was the necessity for warmth, followed by an innate desire for decoration. It wasn`t long before quilting had become an artisan craft, even an art form.
It took more than 2,000 years for quilting to reach Europe. The Crusaders discovered it during their invasion of the Middle East. The craft refined itself through the 15th and 16th Centuries, so that, by the time the first generation of pilgrims set foot in the New World, chief among their possessions were quilts.
Once in America, quilting took on a new life. Gone were the fine fabrics and rich designs. They had been replaced with feed sacks, remnants of worn clothing and, later, homespun made from flax and hand-woven wool. Forced to make do with very little, women in the New World gave birth to the American patchwork.
This new breed of quilt flourished well into the last quarter of the 19th Century. According to Ann Wasserman, an Evanston-based fiber artist and quilt- history expert who travels throughout the suburbs to lecture on the social context and history of quilting, quilts evolved from functional blankets into carefully pieced symbols of commemoration for births, friendships, marriage and even death.
”It sounds kind of risque,” she said, ”but back then everything important happened in bed.”
Guy deMaupassant, a 19th Century French author and one of the world`s greatest short-story writers, explained it succinctly when he said: ”The bed is our whole life. It is there that we are born, it is there that we love, it is there that we die.”
”Usually the bed was the only piece of furniture that the pioneers carried westward,” Wasserman said. ”The bed was really a special place, so the quilt on it became special, too.”
By the 1850s, issues such as slavery and temperance were heartily discussed around the quilting frame, and the quilts themselves became banners, petitions and fundraising tools. It was not until the rise of the machine age that, except within remote villages and mountain cabins, the craft had seemingly died.
But before that happened, quilting had woven itself tightly into the social fabric.
Muriel Douglas, an Oak Brook grandmother, self-taught quilter and quilt-history buff, gives traveling show-and-tell lectures throughout the suburbs with her collection of more than 50 quilts. During a recent lecture, Douglas explained that, up until the mid-1800s, education was an unattainable thing for most women. Even if they knew how to write, few women had the time.
”Quilting was the lone outlet for creativity and self-expression,” she said. As families moved west, life on the frontier was re-created in the patterns, such as Prairie Flower, Bear Paw, Indian Hatchet, Log Cabin, Rocky Road to Kansas and Crosses and Losses. As communities were formed, Little Red School House, Hand of Friendship, White House Steps and Carpenter`s Wheel danced across the quilt tops.
And the strong ties to church were reflected in such patterns as Jacob`s Ladders, Job`s Tears, Solomon`s Crown, Forbidden Fruit Trees and Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. Douglas explained that women were often joined by their neighbors at the quilting frame not only to expedite a quilt`s completion but also for camaraderie.
”Visiting for the sake of visiting was not tolerated,” she said, ”but groups of women from homes miles apart could legitimately get together and quilt.”
Quilting bees soon became the center of the social sphere; the guests came early and got right to work, and the men joined the women in the evening for a bountiful supper followed by games, singing, dancing and courting.
Today, even a new quilt made of machine-made cotton, colored with synthetic dyes and sewn on a state-of-the-art Viking sewing machine, holds a little bit of the past in its creation: It seems to speak of another time and place, even if in a faint whisper, so that with a little imagination, it becomes much more than just a blanket.
”Quilts can tell fabulous stories,” said Barb Vlack of St. Charles, a charter member and past president of Prairie Star Quilters Guild in Geneva and a charter member of the Northwest Suburban Quilters Guild in Arlington Heights. ”When you consider how long it takes to make a quilt . . . if you had a running story about what was going on, a lot can happen in that time.” A touching example of personal documentation was recorded by Marguerite Ickis, a student of patchwork and author of ”The Standard Book of Quilting and Collecting” (Dover Publications Inc., 1949), in which she quoted her great-grandmother as saying:
”It took me more than 20 years, nearly 25, I reckon. (I worked) in the evenings after supper when the children were all put to bed. My whole life is in that quilt. It scares me sometimes when I look at it. All my joys and all my sorrows are stitched into those little pieces.
”When I was proud of the boys and when I was down-right provoked and angry with them. When the girls annoyed me or when they gave me a warm feeling around my heart. And John, too. He was stitched into that quilt and all the 30 years we were married. Sometimes I loved him and sometimes I sat there hating him as I pieced the patches together. So they are all in that quilt, my hopes, and fears, my joys and sorrows, my loves and hates. I tremble sometimes when I remember what that quilt knows about me.”
Readily available machine-made blankets and bedspreads plus a fussy Victorian attitude that quilts somehow had come to represent backward, rural communities led to the near disappearance of the craft by the late 1880s. Quilting didn`t come back to life until the Depression.
”I think, again, people just needed to make use of what they had,”
Douglas said. ”I know some people who don`t like quilting because it reminds them of the Depression.”
”A lot of scrap quilts were made (at that time),” said Darlene Roberts, owner of Quilt Books Unlimited in Batavia. ”And (quilting) has always been good therapy. It makes people feel good.
”After the Depression, I think there was a desire to have new things, so it kind of died out again.”
But during the almost complete disappearance of quilts in the 1950s and 1960s, there were still the faithful followers who continued to make them, and many old quilts were saved, even if relegated to ironing board covers or furniture protectors on moving day. Collectors moved quietly through flea markets, barns and antiques shops, plucking quilts off barn floors, wagon seats and the backs of pickup trucks, so that, as Americans began to revolt against what was turning into a mechanized society, the warmth and comfort of the quilt was patiently waiting to comfort us.
And comfort it has. Ask any quilter why they quilt, and their eyes light up, and words like ”therapy,” ”sisterhood,” ”sharing” and ”creative outlet” punctuate the animated responses.
”My husband calls it my obsession,” said Debbie Schneider, co-chairwoman of the North Lake County Quilters Guild, based in Lindenhurst.
”When you start meeting other quilters, there`s this bond that seems to be automatic.”
”My store is built on new quilters, and we continue to have a waiting list (for classes),” said Pam Hockemeyer, owner of Prairie Patchwork Mercantile Ltd. in Woodstock. ”The sharing that people do when they`re quilting is a neat thing. You come together in quilting. You`re doing something hands-on, you`ve got to sit down and concentrate, and the fast-paced world outside kinda . . . it`s going to have to go on for a couple of hours without you.”
”In today`s busy society, there aren`t a lot of places where we can sit and just talk to each other without feeling guilty.”
Rice, of A Touch of Amish, agrees. ”(Quilting) satisfies so many different levels of our needs. A lot of people love the fabric, touching it, and the colors. Other people love making a quilt and giving it to someone. There`s nothing more relaxing to me than sitting down at my sewing machine and putting pieces together. When I am stressed, what I need to do is sit at my sewing machine for a little while. It`s very therapeutic.
”We feel we provide therapy for women on a certain level here at the quilt shop,” Rice said. ”We are reinforcing these women who maybe aren`t getting the reinforcement they need elsewhere. We share a certain communality, a certain sisterhood, in loving to do this.”
”Quilting is a great way to get women together,” said Carol Larsson, who handles public relations for the Village Quilters of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. ”It fills a gap. It`s not like a newcomers club or the Junior League . . . . You`ll hear people say, `I`ve never met a quilter I didn`t like,` I think that`s true.”
”There are quilt guilds that have organized weekend retreats for their members,” Vlack said. ”There are vacations that are organized, there have even been cruises organized just for quilters. I think that within these groups there`s an awful lot of feminist support for each other.
”I think, too, what`s happened with quilting is it`s an expression of yourself. It`s gotten to be a need in our lives to have this creative outlet. The support that we give to each other to encourage finding that creative outlet is really tremendous.”
Mary Stori, past president of Northwest Suburban Quilters Guild, turned to quilting when a back injury prevented her from pursuing a career teaching culinary arts. ”I like the social activity,” she said, ”but for me it`s really the creativity. All of the creativity that I spent on my (cook) book and doing the things that I did, I had to stop that. So for me, it was a real lifesaver.”
Joan Attenberg, owner of Prints Charming, a fabric and quilting shop in Long Grove, said she believes quilting is not only back but also here to stay. ”Despite the economy, we have sold more fabric than we have in the last 14 years,” she said. ”And the shows put on by guilds like Northwest Suburban and Illinois Quilters Inc. draw thousands of people, so quilting seems to be alive and well in the `90s despite the fact that most women are working. I think the creative urges that are satisfied with quilting is a big part of it.”
Not only is quilting back, it`s also being embraced by a whole new breed: the fiber artist.
”What`s happening now, is (quilts) have gotten off the beds and onto walls. We`re even wearing them,” Vlack said.
Melody Johnson, a professional fiber artist from Cary whose colorful, avant-garde style has resulted in more than a few raised eyebrows at some of the more traditional quilt shows, works with cotton and silk fabric she dyes herself to create bright, sometimes wild geometric patterns that are full of line, movement and color.
”It`s been my aim to try and be innovative in my work and try and add to the traditional instead of repeating what`s already been done,” she said.
”When I talk about quilt-making as art, it makes some people uncomfortable. They don`t want to be in a situation where they are challenged to make art. They want to continue to make something that they`re familiar with, that they understand and know the rules to.”
But when Johnson needs a little comfort, when the pressures of ”being an artist” get to be too much or when she wants to clear the dust bunnies out of what she describes as her creative center, she turns to traditional quilting for therapy.
”The process of doing it is so enjoyable and relaxing,” she said.
”(It`s) a mindless kind of process of just feeling the fabric under your hand, holding the color close to your face, to feel it and to be a part of it. The tactileness of it is what draws us to it, and then the discovery of how the pattern begins to form and grow. It doesn`t come from the same place in my head, but it is something that I truly enjoy. And the motivation is still the same-to stir the senses.”
