View From Antioch Mountain

THIS ‘UGLY QUILT’ CONTAINS MANY LAYERS OF BEAUTY

Last year Barbara Boosted brought two or three of her beautiful quilts to share with us at the Canehill Festival Quilt Show. She also brought a quilt she called the ”Ugly Quilt.”

When she appeared without it this year I begged her to bring it again, and reluctantly she complied.

Because this quilt inspired a great deal of interest and admiration at this year’s show, I am repeating the column I wrote about it last fall.

If you missed it then, I hope you will enjoy it now. I hope those of you who read it last year may find it worth reading again.

The sweet lady who brought it to me for the quilt show said, “I brought the ugliest quilt you’ve ever seen.”

When I looked at it, I saw what she meant. It was a true scrap quilt, intended only to keep someone warm. Its colors seemed random and the pattern was difficult to discern.

Made in 1900 in Canada, it was created from thousands of tiny strips taken from worn out shirts and outgrown dresses. It was a jumble of colors: pink, green, blue, brown, black and white that I remember and some that I don’t recall.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

However, I recognized the pattern, a variation of log cabin called “Courthouse Steps.” When I studied it closely I began to see the beauty of it.

The woman who pieced this quilt did not have the unbelievable luxury of going into an amazing quilting store to buy beautiful and expensive quilting fabrics; she had to make do with whatever was at hand.

She cut out the strips, working around the holes and worn places in old clothes.

Then she pieced each block, meticulously choosing the color placements as she went along. Then she sewed the blocks together into a top, and she quilted and finished by hand.

When this quilt, made with loving hands, kept her children warm on a freezing Canadian winter night, it must have seemed beautiful enough to them.

A work of art is a corner of creation.....” — Emile Zola

I have seen some ugly quilts, but this one wasn’t one of them.

There is beauty in the carefully saved materials; there is beauty in the traditional design so painstakingly arranged; there is beauty in the warmth it provides; and there is beauty in the love that went into every tiny stitch.

This quilt is a work of art, and the quilter has all my respect.

And thats the View from Antioch Mountain.