Quilting - Resurgence of an Antique Art Form

Quilting A Truly American Art Form Makes a Big Comeback

Their lives are different. Their stories are different. And their quilts certainly are different. But quilters of all generations and backgrounds seem to share a common spirit. In the late 1880s, Prescott singer Nellie G. Smith stitched her quilt from hundreds of tiny blue silk ribbons gathered from the necks of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer bottles.

Then there was May Weech, a member of a pioneering family that settled in southeastern Arizona. Quilts had been such a part of her life that when she died a quilt, instead of the customary flower spray, covered her casket.

There was a group of pioneer women in Nogales who started stitching a crazy quilt in 1875, decorating the velvet strips with images of desert flowers, cacti, Indians, and women in bonnets. Their lives were hard and uncertain, yet they worked until 1887 to create the quilt, and they proudly signed their work with their initials and "Nogales, A.T.," the letters standing for Arizona Territory.

Many remember Emma Andres, who worked in her father's Prescott cigar store during the 1950s. Between customers she embroidered a quilt to immortalize Arizona Republic editorial cartoonist Reg Manning's work. Emma's talent was legendary, and when her father retired from the cigar business, she turned the store on Cortez Street into a museum to share her creations with the world.

Quilts have been a part of American life since Colonial days. They often were stitched from necessity they made warm bed covers from scraps of material but they also were a way to express individuality in a hard life that had a way of turning bright colors drab. Arizona pioneers brought their quilts to the territory. They were used to give as gifts at weddings, comfort the sick, bundle the babies, and cradle the dead. One tale holds that a quilt was waved as a surrender flag during a battle between pioneers and Indians in the wilds of Arizona Territory. The coverlets were stitched from patterns with names that told the story of frontier life: “Log Cabin,” “Double Wedding Ring,” “Grandmother's Flower Garden,” “Road to Arizona,” “Drunkard's Path,” “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul,” and “Broken Dishes.”

Quilting...

made warm bed covers from scraps of material but they also were a way to express individuality in a hard life that had a way of turning bright colors drab. Arizona pioneers brought their quilts to the territory. They were used to give as gifts at weddings, comfort the sick, bundle the babies, and cradle the dead. One tale holds that a quilt was waved as a surrender flag during a battle between pioneers and Indians in the wilds of Arizona Territory. The coverlets were stitched from patterns with names that told the story of frontier life: “Log Cabin,” “Double Wedding Ring,” “Grandmother's Flower Garden,” “Road to Arizona,” “Drunkard's Path,” “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul,” and “Broken Dishes.” Tiny bits of fabric scraps were traded like gold. Sugar sacks, tobacco sacks, and even Pabst's blue ribbons were collected by quilters with an eye focused on art while dealing with the frugalities of life. Quilts were stitched by the light of a coal-oil lamp after a day of backbreaking work in the field, cooking for a houseful, and washing laundry in a tub set on an outdoor fire. Women traveled miles over lonely, rough roads to spend a few hours with a neighbor around a quilting frame. Today's quilters work under conditions very different from those of their ancestors. They often buy coordinating fabrics made especially for quilts. They use specially designed rotary cutters and have a sewing basket full of high-tech notions and gadgets, such as a marking pen whose ink disappears after a few hours. But ask them why they quilt, and they echo the sentiments of their mothers and grandmothers. Marie Green, who lives in Youngtown, patiently explains her stacks of quilts. “Quilting's not work. It's just what I do. I'm lost without a needle in my hand. It's my art. Always has been. I work out my problems when I quilt.”

Quilting...

It seems that anyone who quilts feels much the same way. Deanna Miller of Flagstaff, who works full time and manages a busy household, puts it this way: "Quilting is a way I can express myself. Quilting can be solitary, or it can be social, whichever I want it to be." Una Jarvis of Phoenix, who wears out thimbles like most women wear out pantyhose, agrees. "There's nothing like a pretty quilt to cheer the soul," she says, stitching on a starry fabric stretched over a frame in her specially built "quiltin' room." "If I don't have a quilt in the frame, this room is just empty," she adds, commenting on more than the physical condition. Quilting never really died, but it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last 15 years. People of all ages sign up for classes at quilt shops, and men as well as women who have never held a needle are learning the enjoyment of the art. Carol Meka of Phoenix, known for her fine technique, tells with pride about one of her best students: Tom Moehl. "I showed him how to hold a needle and coached him through a few stitches," she says, "and that was it. He went on to do better than I did at the state fair the next year! Tom's one of the finest quilters I know."

Few quilters are admittedly few in number, but at least one early Arizona male, John D. Lee, quilted his hours away in a Utah prison while awaiting trial for leading the Mountain Meadows Massacre in which about 140 persons from a wagon train were slaughtered. Lee, who established Lees Ferry on the Colorado River in northern Arizona, stitched sugar sacks together into a "Carolina Lily" pattern during his 1875-76 incarceration. Look closely at his work, and you might find a lion it's one of those evasive images that can be seen only when the eye is receptive. This is called a "secondary pattern" by quilters because the pattern emerges through a play of light and dark, secondary to the primary pattern.

Executed before finishing his quilt, Lee had written that the lion represented himself, caged behind bars.

To acknowledge and preserve an important part of Arizona's heritage, some quilters started the Arizona Quilt Project in 1986. The group's Quilt Discovery Days, held in cities and towns across the state, brought many treasures out of trunks, along with proud stories of how they were created. The group's work is ongoing, and so far its volunteers have taught schoolchildren about quilts and quilters; produced a video tape, "Arizona Quilts, Pieces of Time," with funding from the Arizona Humanities Council; and turned out a book, Grand Endeavors: Vintage Arizona Quilts and Their Makers (Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ).

Quilters of Native American, Mexican, and African-American heritage also have made their mark in the state. Jim Griffith, folklorist at the Southwest Folklore Center in Tucson, found that African-American quilters have their own sense of design and color, often reflecting a whimsical and relaxed attitude toward the task.

"There's a free spirit about their work that I find really charming," he says, remembering the quilt show he organized that was dedicated to the state's African-American quilters. "We named it 'Geometry in Motion,' and that's exactly what it was. "It hung in the state Capitol building and attracted quite a fanfare. The reviews were mixed it seems some of the state's more traditional quilters didn't understand or appreciate this rather whimsical work."

While quilters may quibble about technique, color choice, or design sense, they agree that their work is not meant to be hidden away.

"I want this quilt to be used, to be loved to death," says Donna Rufener of Phoenix, as she hands over a fine cream-colored baby quilt to a new mother. "I want this quilt to be worn, stained, and frayed by the time your baby outgrows it."

Quilters all over the state got busy when they learned that Department of Public Safety officers wanted baby quilts to give to children injured in accidents or traumatized by violence.

Deanna Miller, president of the Flagstaff Quilter's Guild, shares with a bittersweet pride the group's scrapbook of notes from officers who detail the circumstances sur-rounding their gifts of the quilts: "Six-year-old hitchhiking to California with dad. Gave him a quilt, and he thanked me."

"Three children ages five, eight and 10 in-volved in motor-vehicle accident. Parents hospitalized. Children given quilts to help them calm down."

Tucson Quilt Guild members do their part by quilting for the Arizona Child-ren's Home (See Arizona Highways, May '92), making doll quilts for the Salvation Army, and making a quilt for a raffle held at the Cancer Society's Angel Ball. Many of the quilters are employed full time outside the home. But they make time to quilt for others.

Betty Hayden of Tucson, another devotee, sums it up simply: "Quilting is only fun when you share it."