Family Tradition Makes the Quilt

by Carol Davis

Karen Fish sewed the bright pansy print and black fabric, piecing together a family history one stitch at a time. She threaded decades of individual lives into a large, ornate quilt destined to be a family heirloom.

Each block in the quilt would be dedicated to and contain the embroidered names of her grandparents, her mother, and her mother’s brothers and sisters. Those who had passed on, or who had lost a spouse or child, would get an extra touch—an angel in their block.

Karen had her work cut out for her: Her mother was one of 14 children.

Her labor of love was for no one in particular, but for everyone in her large, close-knit, extended Crossville, Tenn., (pop. 8,981) family. The quilt would be raffled among family members to pay for their annual, long-standing Christmas reunion.

Still, when it was finished and a cousin claimed the winning ticket, Karen, 35, found it difficult to hand over the quilt. Her name wasn’t embroidered into any of the quilt blocks—that was reserved for the generations before her—but so much of herself was poured into the quilt.

“When you work on something for so long,” explains Bertha Sherrill, 67, her aunt and fellow quilter, “you get attached.”

Karen is among some 20 million Americans who keep the old-fashioned art of

quilting not only alive, but thriving. Some, like Karen, are upholding longtime family traditions. Others have discovered what she already knows: the satisfaction of creating a uniquely beautiful, yet useful, work of art.

From work to workmanship

A quilt’s most visual part is the “top,” in which different fabrics are sewed, or pieced together (by hand or machine), in blocks to create a pattern. But that’s just the first step.

“The quilt itself is a sandwich with a top, and batting, and backing,” explains Pepper Cory, a Beaufort, N.C. quilting teacher who has authored several books, including Mastering Quilt Marking and Quilting Designs from Antique Quilts. “The quilting is the sewing through all three layers that makes it a dimensional object that provides warmth.”

Quilting, which now can be done by machine as well as by hand, can be quite ornate, consisting of swirls and other fancy designs that add lights, shadows, and texture. To see more clearly the amazing detail and tiny stitches that some hand quilters achieve, turn a quilt over and look at the back.

Quilting, which dates back hundreds of years, once was a utilitarian task; if you expected to stay warm in the winter, you’d better make plenty of quilts.

“We think of it now as hobby, but many years ago, in the 1800s and 1700s, quilting was one of the basic things that a woman had to learn to do. It was as basic as cooking or rearing children,” Cory says. “Even George Washington’s wife made quilts, and she was an aristocrat.”

But women took tedious household work and turned it into beautiful workmanship.

“My belief is that a lot of people who made quilts found a way of having it become an art form for them,” says Roberta Horton, of Berkeley, Calif., a quilt teacher and best-selling author of quilt books, including Scrap Quilts: The Art of Making Do and An Amish Adventure: A Workbook for Color in Quilts. “Women had so few options. Very few could be painters, so quilting was an everyday activity that allowed them to play with color and design.”

Traditional patterns, now numbering in the hundreds, include such colorful names as mariner’s compass, log cabin, starburst, Jacob’s ladder, star of Bethlehem, grandmother’s flower garden, Dresden plate, grandmother’s fan, and nine patch. Creative quilters continually add to these patterns.

But as times changed and store-bought blankets became available, quiltmaking began to fade, save for a few creative die-hards or families who could better afford to make their own.

Quilting’s current “revival” partly can be attributed to the landmark, wildly popular 1971 exhibition of antique American quilts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Horton says.

The exhibit, which then traveled across America and Europe for nearly four years, sparked a renewal of interest in quiltmaking as art. “It made people realize that quilts could be on the wall rather than on the bed,” Horton says.

It also stirred up interest in quilts of various cultures, says Cuesta Benberry, an internationally renowned quilt historian, 1983 Quilter’s Hall of Fame honoree, and author of Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts and A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans.

“For the first time there was interest in and attention paid to the various ethnic groups within the American community, so the quilts of the Amish, Hawaiian, Native American, and the African-American began to receive attention,” says Benberry, of St. Louis.

America’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration also caused a resurgence in quilting, Horton notes. “A lot of people during that time period made group quilts about the cities they lived in and became interested in things historical,” she says. “There are a lot of quilters who began in that time period.”

Feeling connected

Many, such as Karen, embrace quilting because it’s a family craft. She started quilting just last year, carrying on the tradition of her mother, Sue Maynard, 55, and her much-beloved late grandmother, Nellie Barnes. “I like to have never gotten her interested,” Sue says with a laugh.

But many women look to their roots after they have their own children, Horton notes. “There is a feeling of continuing a tradition then,” she says. “They often feel much more connected.”

Sue’s own love of quilting first surfaced at about 8 years old when she sewed and quilted small squares of cloth from her mother’s sewing basket. “I used to cover my dolls with them,” she remembers fondly. But she left the family tradition behind during her teenaged years and didn’t reclaim it until she was married with her own young family.

That’s when Karen, as a kindergartner, brought home a Christmas picture—an angel in flight trumpeting a bugle. Sue cut it out, transferred the pattern to light blue cloth with a red background, and stitched a full-sized quilt.

Since then, Sue estimates that she’s made more than 25 quilts, some of which she’s given to loved ones. The patterns are as varied as her imagination—the nine-diamond, basket, fence rails, sampler quilt, and bow tie—and she looks everywhere for ideas: magazines, flea markets, and fabric stores. She shares ideas with her sister, Bertha, who is making a colorfully embroidered state flower quilt.

But that first quilt is the most precious; it was one of the few belongings salvaged from a devastating Christmas 1983 electrical fire that burned the Maynard home to the ground. Some 30 years after Sue made the quilt, she finally gave it to her daughter last year. “I had been after her for years to give it to me,” Karen says.

The special quilt is something Karen eventually will hand down to her daughter, Samantha, 13, who’s already sewing and quilting. Samantha is bound to carry on a tradition started generations ago in this large family that reveres its heritage.

Indeed, Karen feels a deep, loving kinship to her late grandmother whenever she picks up a needle and thread. “It brings me,” she says, “one step closer to her.”

Carol Davis, American Profile’s national editor, is continuing the quilting tradition of her mother, Ruby Hill Davis, and late grandmother, Rosa Sandel Hill.

first appeared: 9/30/2001