Handmade quilts soften edges in high-tech homes
I don’t know about you, but my weekly screentime hours are embarrassingly excessive. The more attention I pay to my electronic devices, the more convinced I am that we need to surround ourselves with items you can’t plug in. Homes need live plants, piles of books, original art, handknit blankets and artisan quilts.
Alexa, can you make a quilt?
No.
I’ve never made a quilt either, but I am satisfying my curiosity by talking to serious quilters about the importance of handicrafts in the American home.
“What other craft involves creating something that keeps your loved ones warm?” asks quilt designer and teacher Shannon Brinkley, of Leesburg, Va. “It’s the perfect blend of function and beauty.”
“Every quilt tells a story,” says Carissa Heckathorn, director of the Iowa Quilt Museum and a quilter for more than 30 years. “A quilt from the 1800s can tell you a lot about the woman who made it. The quilt can tell you if the woman was utilitarian, making quilts quickly from scraps to keep her family warm, repurposing old clothing because she didn’t have money to buy fabric, or if she was an affluent woman of leisure, who could afford to buy matching fabrics and had the time to stitch precisely cut appliqués.”
I try to imagine what story my quilt would tell and picture a haphazard patchwork of worn-out yoga pants held together by chewing gum and staples.
According to a 2020 Craft Industry Alliance survey, quilting in North America is a $4.2 billion industry, with as many as 12 million quilters — 98 percent of them women — practicing the craft. So I asked Brinkley and Heckathorn to tell me more.
Q » When did quilts first come to America and how have they evolved?
HECKATHORN » The first quilts probably arrived here in the 1500s. For European colonists, quilting was a popular pastime and a way for women to get together. Different quilt block patterns emerged to reflect women’s roles in the home as well as their religious and political views. During the Great Depression, women commonly made quilts out of feed sacks. In the 1960s and ’70s, we saw lots of polyester in quilts. In the ’80s, quilting weight cotton became popular and is what most quilters use today. As more tools became available, including rotary cutters with builtin rulers that simplify the cutting process, quilts became more commercial.
How do people use quilts in homes today?
HECKATHORN » The importance of the quilt in the American home has changed. Pioneer women made bed quilts not because they wanted to sew, but because their families needed them for warmth. While we still use quilts for beds and cribs, we also see them as table toppers or runners, and hung as wall art, a luxury our ancestors didn’t have.
BRINKLEY » Although the art of quilting has been evolving for centuries, the pandemic caused the craft to progress much faster because of social media. Today quilters from all over the world are sharing their work online, inspiring new techniques, creating an artistic explosion.
Q » What are the basic types of quilts?
BRINKLEY » A quilt by definition is three layers of material — a top, middle and bottom — sandwiched together, stitched and bound around the edges. The top is where the action is. Today the middle layer is often batting. The three main styles of quilting are piecing, where you patch together cut scraps to create a whole; appliqué, where you attach cutout fabric shapes to background fabric; and whole cloth, where the quilt top, like the bottom, is a solid piece of fabric. In this style, the design of the quilt stitch is the star.