History and Quilts

The program on the art of quiltmaking was really good, especially for showing how traditional and new can be bridged. My long-standing memory of quilts was in receiving and using a quilt from each of my grandmothers (3 grandmothers) (4 quilts) (1 long story). These quilts were colorful patchwork and contained scraps of fabric that I knew from my mother's sewing and later from mine. The last quilt I got was a single-bed covering after Grandma Hughes visited my dorm room and was miffed to find I couldn't use her double-bed quilt because it would go on the floor and get dirty. (My recollection of the dust bunnies at Birch Hall in Ames, Iowa, that year is that they were as large as jacklalopes and covered with spines like an echidna).

Anyway, the traditional to new bridge part for me began after seeing a Martha Skelton quilt at least 15 years ago at a viewing in Jackson. I had no idea quilts could tell such a story. In more recent years, I have seen the quilts that are still colorful and may tell a story in abstract, or may be non-objective, but are very sophisticated in their design. I love the quilts with splashes of metallic colors that shout BREAK-OUT! If only my grandmothers could have seen the quilts at the Old Constitution Firehouse on October 10th. What a deal that would have been.

Cheers,
Jean