05/22/98

To Quilters With Love

In response to History and Dreams in Cloth (5/18/98)

Quilting represents more than a pastime to many readers, some of whom still quilt socially, just like their Colonial sisters did. Others find the process soothing and therapeutic, as described below.

• Quilting is so wonderfully calming, and it draws the whole family in as one. I made several variations on the log cabin design, using all darks of two different colors. Did you know that studies done on stress reduction during hobby practice show that quilters have the greatest decrease in biophysical measures of stress?

  Once or twice a year an acquaintance of mine hosts a "Women's Weekend" at her summer home on a small lake in New Hampshire. We quilt for three days straight. As each quilt is completed we hang it over the loft railing and take pictures. Some of the women have never even sewn on a button before. Talk about a sense of accomplishment! It's a time of sharing, caring and creativity in pajamas and jeans. We all look forward to our quilting getaway! -- Soothing and Calming

• After many years of sewing clothing I have recently started quilting. I've also collected several lovely old quilts which I proudly display and use in our home. The first quilt I made was a gift to my favorite aunt in her favorite color, purple. -- For a Favorite Relative

• I'm looking to starting a quilt to record my family's special events. I still have a quilt, perhaps the only surviving one, that my grandmother made for me to take to college. Whenever I sleep under it, I feel as if I am surrounded by her loving protection again. Thanks for your wonderful article! -- Quilt's Loving Protection

• My wife is starting to quilt. She's been doing a lot of needlepoint, but wants to begin something more challenging and quilt a history of her life and one for our daughter. I bought her an antique thimble that she loves. -- Personal History in Quilts

• "When nineteenth-century women described their quilts as "bound volumes of hieroglyphics" or as their "albums" and their "diaries," they were fully aware of what we have recently newly recognized: that their stitched fabrics were often the most eloquent records of their lives. Today we are in the midst of an explosion of interest in women's history, and historians, traditionally attracted to the written word as the way of understanding the past, are increasingly recognizing the need to turn to other sources as well, since women, who were often denied education and discouraged from writing, left fewer written records than men. One source, and a paramount one, are their quilts. For if comparatively few women wrote, practically all of them sewed, and in their quilts, especially, they found a capacious medium for expression. For vast numbers of nineteenth-century women, their needles became their pens and quilts their eminently expressive texts." -- from "Hearts and Hands" by Elaine Hedges

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.