In the lecture that we give as part of our Quilt Story Road Show program, we share our Top Five Reasons You Should Label Your Quilt. One of those reasons is “For your family: because a quilt can’t speak for itself, and it might outlive you.” More and more often though, we hear a common refrain, “What if my family doesn’t want my quilts? Then what? Who will want them and appreciate them?” In an effort to dig into this question, we asked quilt historian Merikay Waldvogel of Knoxville, Tennessee to write our first post of a blog series we’re calling The Next Quilt Keepers. Merikay recently interviewed fashion designer Emily Bode who uses salvaged quilts in her menswear pieces. Join or renew your membership with the Quilt Alliance to watch StoryBee episode 3, featuring Emily Bode interviewed by Merikay Waldvogel (watch at the end of this post). The Next Quilt Keepers: Quilt Historian Meets Fashion Designer by Merikay Waldvogel First, I saw photos of Kardashian women lounging on bright red-and-white pieced quilts inside a barn. Calvin Klein was advertising his spring line in Manhattan this spring. I wasn’t sure what the quilts, the barn or the Kardashians had to do with selling clothes, but they sure got my attention. More than one designer used quilts this spring, and I wasn’t the only quilt historian who cringed. Haven’t we been down this road before. Why do quilts have to be destroyed for the sake of design, marketing or shock value? And then I read about 28-year-old fashion designer Emily Bode in GQ Style Magazine: “Bode is winning the New York Fashion Race with Quilts (Yes Quilts). She is turning rare and forgotten textiles into workwear you’ll want to start collecting.” She’s designing clothes for men (Yes Men) with quilts! I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t as upset this time. I shared my feelings with Amy Milne (Quilt Alliance executive director). She, too, had seen the article and Bode’s line of menswear. Visit Bode’s website to see for yourself. My husband wouldn’t wear such outfits, but Amy’s teenage son might. We all thought they were original and refreshing. I jumped at the chance to interview Emily Bode for the Alliance’s StoryBee project. How cool! We would do it using the video camera on our iPhones! What questions would I ask her? I invited my quilt friends to suggest some questions. One friend groused, “She doesn’t want to hear my opinion. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of her jackets.” Another friend gave me my best question, “How do you see yourself as being different from others who are using the quilt theme in their fashions?” For all quilt lovers, the big question was “Why cut up quilts?” The more I considered that question, the more I stumbled upon the irony of quilts themselves being made from cut-up textiles, clothing, bed linens, salesmen samples, feed sacks and aprons. I think our unease has to do with the fact that quilts, for the most part, are anonymous. The fact that the quilt remains in relatively good shape is a testament to the work of the quiltmaker. And who are we to cut it up, to end its use? I knew I would have to ask her that question. She had heard the criticism before. She responded that some quilts in jackets that people are most upset about were made by quilters on her staff. When she must “repurpose” a vintage quilt, she does her best to record its history, pattern name, and age on the garment tag. She even hopes to embed the history in some sort of barcode for the buyer to keep. She won my heart with this answer. This is exactly what the Alliance has advocated for since its inception. Save the stories in any way possible. I asked her why quilts this year seem to be popular and how long she plans to use vintage fabrics and quilts. She told me what she is doing differently is that she is building her Bode menswear brand around repurposing vintage fabrics and needlework. Hers is not an advertising ploy. The various colors, patterning, surface embroidery and even repairs will determine the look of the line from season to season. Then my mind started spinning? If she is going to flourish and have multiple garments sold in stores, where will she find enough quilts, crocheted items, needlework, and quilt tops. She told me that one cut-up quilt or top doesn’t make more than three jackets. She shops online and at antique markets for textiles, but one particular dealer in New England looks for things Emily might like. She told me she was on her way to India to check out warehoused bolts of fabrics—”deadstock” she called it. “Sometimes we are lucky and find a few pieces of 1920s or 30s fabrics. Usually, it’s 1980s fabrics which is just fine,” she said. Hmmm, I thought – 1980s fabrics? This might be the answer to a problem we fabric hoarders have! We could all ship her boxes of fabrics, unfinished projects, quilt blocks and tops, or even crocheted items. She smiled when I made the suggestion but didn’t reject the idea outright. She does seem to have plenty of “materiel” already. Before I got carried away with my “brilliant” idea, I wondered if she really knew the difference between a quilt to save and a quilt to repurpose. She convinced me when she talked about hand-made quilts with lots of quilting. Listen to her answers. In conclusion, this seventy-year-old quilt historian is glad to have met twenty-eight-year-old fashion designer, Emily Bode. I came away from the interview with a smile on my face. This young woman has found her voice and found her brand. Her journey has not been long but she seems to know where she’s going. I learned what she values, how she creates and what it takes to produce a fashion line. I may not ever wear a jacket made of an 1880s Log Cabin quilt no matter how distressed it, but in the hands of Emily Bode, our quilts and their stories are resonating once again in this modern world. And like the repair to broken Japanese pottery known as “kintsugi,” in this case, the re-purposing may result in something not only longer- lasting, but also more artistic than the original.
Merikay Waldvogel, one of the key players of the late 20th century quilt history revival, has served on the board of directors of both the American quilt Study Group and the Quilt Alliance. She has been involved in a number of QA projects including: The Quilt Index, Boxes Under the Bed, Quilt Treasures, and QSOS. Her quilt journey began with the purchase of one quilt in Chicago that touched her heart even though she knew nothing about its maker or the circumstances of its making. A few years later in Tennessee, she co-directed the Tennessee Quilt Survey in the 1980s, and began writing and lecturing about women and their quilts. She has written several books including: Quilts of Tennessee, Soft Covers for Hard Times, Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World’s Fair, Southern Quilts of the Civil War, and Childhood…
If you’re coming to Quilters Take Manhattan this year on Saturday, September 16, I hope you’ll consider supplementing the fun by coming to our amazing Garment District Scavenger Hunt the day before. The Hunt goes from 2:30 to 5:00 pm on Friday and tickets are $40/each. Buy your tickets here. Since the hunt was my idea and I put the event together last year, I wanted to let you know how it works. This isn’t the sort of scavenger hunt where you’ll have to look under rocks in parks, or knock on a stranger’s door to get a weird kitchen gadget. Instead, you’ll be roaming around the Garment District as part of a team of five, with very explicit addresses and directions. At each of the places you go, you’ll be asked to prove you were there by taking a “group selfie,” sometimes with a prop (at Mood Fabrics, you may have to pose with clashing fabrics.) What makes this hunt especially fun for quilters, is that you’ll be stopping at historic landmarks, tucked-away quilt shops and the headquarters of NY-based fabric companies and having loads of fun along the way. We’ve made the time period longer, so everybody will have time to get to each and every stop. (You won’t want to miss any: some of the people you meet along the way will give you free stuff!) You can bring friends to add to your team, but you can also sign up solo: we’ll put you on a team with other passionate quilters. Each team will have 5 people. Here are a few of the things you might be asked to do: Visit this famous sculpture of a garment worker. Get your picture taken with someone on Seventh Ave. who looks like she/he ought to be a contestant on Project Runway. The rest is a secret! You won’t find out the stops until you start this magical Scavenger Hunt. By the way, the hunt will start and stop at Gotham Quilts, a cool modern quilt shop on the 6th floor of an office building. Don’t take my word that this will be a memorable outing, let’s ask Andrea “Andi” Foster (below left) who was on last year’s winning team, pictured here (below right) with their winner ribbons and prizes! “ This event is so much fun! You and your teammates tear around NYC and try to come up with a strategy to stay ahead of the other teams. I loved meeting other quilters, learning where the fabric companies and stores were located and seeing where NYC quilters get to shop. It was a blast!” For the sake of honesty, I have to admit that I stole this idea from famous quilter Paula Nadelstern, whose 60th birthday party was a Manhattan scavenger hunt. All the stops were about things she loved (the Folk Art museum, M & Ms) and hated (cilantro) and we had to get our picture taken showing each of these things. I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to experience the city in this way (and I lived in NYC for 10 years, so it’s not a novelty for me). I wanted to share the fun with all of YOU, fans of the Quilt Alliance and its annual benefit/inspirational party, Quilters Take Manhattan. I was lucky at Paula’s party to be on the winning team (see us left, proudly wearing our plastic medals and “I’m Amazing” tee-shirts.) Join the party! Manhattan has always rewarded those with a sense of adventure! You can thank me later. Buy your tickets ($40/each) on the Quilt Alliance website. Love, Meg Meg Cox is an author, quilter and traditions expert, who served on the Quilt Alliance board from 2005-2015, and as president from 2010-2015. Visit Meg’s website: megcox.com…
This week the Quilt Alliance lost one of its original supporters, who helped envision, lead, and sustain the organization and its projects. Alan Jabbour, former Quilt Alliance board member (2001-07) and president (2006-07), died on January 13, 2017. A renowned folklorist, old-time fiddle player, and collector of old fiddle tunes, Alan was the founding director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. He was also a mentor and friend to many, including those of us who were lucky enough to serve on the board of the Quilt Alliance with him. In 1992, Shelly Zegart and Eunice Ray of the Kentucky Quilt Project went to the American Folklife Center to pitch their idea for a database compiling all of the data from the many state quilt documentation projects—the largest grassroots movement to document an aspect of the decorative arts—along with related quilt media. “Alan loved the idea of the Index and was on board from moment one,” recalls Shelly. “His encouragement, support, and uplift made all the difference.” Soon after, Zegart and Ray joined forces with Karey Bresenhan and Nancy Puentes O’Bryant to establish the Quilt Alliance. Alan hosted the Quilt Alliance’s initial advisory council meeting in 1995 at the Library of Congress. He served as an essential early booster of our mission, and his invaluable connections and leadership served both the Quilt Alliance and the Quilt Index—a partner project of the Quilt Alliance, Michigan State University Museum and MSU’s MATRIX: the Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences—as we developed the organization and this signature project from a nascent idea to what they are today. As Shelly notes, “having the imprimatur of the American Folklife Center made a huge difference in the validation of the Quilt Index and the Alliance.” In addition to serving as a guiding force during the Quilt Alliance’s formative years, Alan impacted many of us personally, through his kind words, encouragement, and musical talent. QA executive director Amy Milne reflects, “Personally, I found Alan to be a warm and supportive colleague whose mentorship meant a lot to me. His devotion to family was unmistakable.” Former board member and Quilt Alliance president Le Rowell fondly recalls her close collaboration with Alan, as well as the “pleasure of his fiddling and folk music presentations, his gift of storytelling and his calm, gentle presence.” I benefitted from his encouragement as I worked toward finishing my book; he believed in me, and that helped me believe in myself. As a folklorist, Alan helped us situate quilts in the world of folk culture. It was hard not to when he’d break out his fiddle. At one board reception in Asheville with Amy’s young children in attendance, he played while they danced, reminding us how we pass on our love of culture and history to each new generation. At Quilters Take Manhattan in 2012, we enjoyed the most delightful entertainment at the annual “After Dark” cocktail party following the main event at FIT. Alan brought both his fiddle and his encyclopedic knowledge of traditional tunes. He played, while our guests danced. Before each song, he would recount its origins, and how he learned it. Denyse Schmidt, who recalls her love of old-time music in her QSOS interview, was a particularly vivacious participant in the makeshift dance floor in Victoria Findlay Wolfe’s loft apartment. Our thoughts are with Karen Jabbour, Alan’s wife of over 55 years, and their extended family. We join the many individuals whose lives Alan touched, sharing in the grief of having lost such an inspirational and devoted friend and colleague. To learn more about Alan: Stephen Winick, “Alan Jabbour 1942-2017,” Folklife Today. Ken Perlman (Alan’s musical partner), remembering Alan. Alan Jabbour’s website Posted by Janneken Smucker President of the Board of Directors, Quilt Alliance jsmucker@wcupa.edu…
In this second post in our series Inspired Giving, you’ll hear from three Quilt Alliance board members who have both donated quilts to our annual auction and purchased quilts for their personal collection made by other artists. Allie Aller, Meg Cox and Lisa Ellis have each donated multiple quilts to the Quilt Alliance’s annual contest, exhibition and auction. We asked each of them to tell us more about their personal quilting history, and what inspires them to create, donate and collect quilt pieces. You can bid on the current group of Quilt Alliance auction quilts here. Tell us your name, location and occupation. Allie Aller of Washougal, WA, studio quilter, author, teacher. Meg Cox of Princeton, NJ, journalist. Lisa Ellis of Fairfax, VA, currently working part time as both an Engineer and Quilt Teacher. Both offer fulfillment. One pays the bills.
Allie Aller
Meg Cox
Lisa Ellis
How many years have you been quilting and who taught you to quilt? Allie: 44 years quilting; taught by my cousin Tracy Seidman Meg: 28 years quilting; taught by my mom Lisa: 13 years quilting; taught by a friend from church, Gwen Emmett. Since she graciously taught me in her home, I have paid it forward and done the same for others. Where do you quilt and what themes or techniques are you currently working with in your studio? Allie: I quilt in my own sewing room at home. I’ve been intently exploring new approaches to stained glass quilting, after having spent several years pursuing the subject in the 1990s. I have a new book coming about this work in February 2017, Allie Aller’s Stained Glass Quilts Reimagined: Fresh Techniques and Design, from C & T Publishing. Meg: Soon, I will be quilting in a spacious studio next to my basement office. I’m making very personal quilts about my life, as well as memorial quilts using my late husband’s shirts LIsa: I quilt in my home studio. I have spilled out into what used to be our formal living room. I am currently working on a series based on the cathedral window. I am using the circular motif to pixelate images. The folds in the block add texture and depth to the design. What do you include on the labels of the quilts you donate? Allie: Quilt title, my name, where it was made, the month and year. If it is specifically for some one, I will write a personal inscription. Meg: The name of the quilt, date it was made, my name & often the name of the organization Lisa: I always include my name, location, and the date.
“Happy It’s Spring” by Allie Aller
“Digital Me” by Meg Cox
“Color Play” by Lisa Ellis
What inspires you to make and donate your quilts to the Quilt Alliance contest and auction? Allie: I believe in the Quilt Alliance’s mission, and want to support it. Also, I love being part of each group of contest quilts, because they are so diverse and as a whole make such a rich impact together. Finally, the design challenges for each theme every year are fun and inspire me to try new ideas. Meg: I love making quilts for Alliance contests because they challenge me to try new techniques and styles, and I know that they’ll be archived online permanently in the amazing Quilt Index (which makes it easier to give them away to strangers). Lisa: I wish to support an organization whose mission I believe in. I have always been drawn to the stories expressed in quilts. The Quilt Alliance mission to capture these stories in perpetuity is important to me. As a collector, what motivates you to buy a quilt? Allie: If I really love it and am inspired by it and want to live with it! Meg: I buy quilts that dazzle me and I buy quilts by iconic quilters whose work I want to own, including Luke Haynes, Pamela Allen, Yvonne Porcella, Jamie Fingal and Sue Nickels (all of whom have contributed quilts to the Alliance contests.) Lisa: I love to decorate my spaces with quilts and appreciate being surrounded by artwork created by other artists. Their ideas and creativity inspire me. Contact the Artists Allie Aller Meg Cox Lisa Ellis Thank you, Allie, Meg and Lisa, for sharing your quilt story and for donating many gorgeous quilts to our annual auction! Bid on the 2016 “Playing Favorites” quilts in our online silent auction, now through Monday, December 5 at 9pm EST on www.BenefitBidding.com/quiltalliance. Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
The Quilt Alliance launched its first quilt contest in 2007 with several goals in mind. One goal was to raise funds to support the Alliance’s move from Louisville, Kentucky to our present home in Asheville, North Carolina. We also wanted to establish this fundraiser as an annual intiative to provide ongoing operating support. Another aim was to document the work of our members by taking a “snapshot” of quilts made in a particular year. QA board members Karen Musgrave and the late Yvonne Porcella set out to make the contest friendly to all quilters, whether they identified as longarmers, hand quilters, modern quilters… or simply artists. With this in mind, they crafted an open-ended theme that anyone could speak to, and that tradition has continued. This year marks the Alliance’s 10th annual contest. Quilt Alliance quilt contests from 2007-2016 2007: Put a Roof Over Our Head 2008: My Quilts/Our History 2009: Crazy for Quilts 2010: New from Old 2011: Alliances: People, Patterns, Passion 2012: Home Is Where the Quilt Is 2013: TWENTY 2014: Inspired By 2015: Animals We Love 2016: Playing Favorites Quilt Alliance member Maude Wallace Haeger is one of the artists who created and donated a small house-shaped quilt (“Casa del Sol”) for our first contest back in 2007. She entered again in 2008, donating four quilts (that worked separately, or as a multi-paneled piece) for the Crazy for Quilts theme. This year, Maude entered our Playing Favorites contest. You can see her quilt along with all of the 2017 contest quilts here. In this innaugural post in our new series, Inspired Giving, I asked Maude to tell her story. During the school year my main job is special education teacher to students in an inner city school, but I am an artist no matter what I am doing and where I am. I try very hard to keep weekends for art work, but it is not a hobby to me, it is what I am driven to do – create. Cooking is a hobby – art is not a hobby. It is often hard work and can require a lot of energy and concentration, so I do not consider it relaxing, but I do enjoy it. I grew up in Urbana, Illinois, the child of two artist parents. From a very early age I found cloth, thread and needle the best way to work artistically or at least creatively. I would make things and then show my mother who would take my hands in hers and with tears in her voice say, “your grandmother would be so proud of you.” My maternal grandmother and great grandmother were both seamstresses, and my great grandfather was an itinerant tailor who, with his wife and children went from wealthy Russian house to wealthy house and sewed the clothes for the family. It is in the genes. My favorite things to do as a child were to look through the costume section of the World Book Encyclopedia and recreate the ethnic costumes for my Barbie doll. I didn’t ever really play with the doll, just made “couturier” clothes for her. I loved to embroider and did so for hours. I took art though all of high school, and my teacher would enter all of her students in the Scholastic Art show each year. I got my share of ribbons and pins, and did actually get the Hallmark purchase prize for a watercolor I did as a senior. But one could not get the purchase prize for textile work. This upset me, because even back in high school I felt that fiber art was just as much an art form as painting and drawing. One day at a University of Illinois faculty art exhibition, I was sitting on the stairs of the Krannert Art Museum watching all the people looking at the show. One of my parent’s friends and fellow art professor, Jack Baker, stopped to talk to me. I told him I wasn’t as much of an artist because I couldn’t paint and draw as well as I could create with thread and cloth. He told me that my stylus was a needle and that was as much a stylus as a pencil, pen or paintbrush! Through high school my medium of choice was embroidery. I struggled with what to do in college, but eventually found Eastern Illinois University where I was able to minor in crafts – weaving and finally graduated with a bachelor’s in weaving. It was after we adopted four hard-to-place children thirty years ago that I switched from weaving to piecing, and have never regretted it. My first piece for the Quilt Alliance was created the year that they were putting a roof on the new building in Asheville. I had fun making “Casa del Sol.” At this point in my life I cannot spend the time I did as a teenager to hand embroider anything, but I have been learning how to use the machine stitching to advantage. My entry for the Quilt Alliance contest this year, “Go Fish,” was inspired by a quilt I began for a different exhibition but never got to enter due to family, health and students! However, I have included a picture of what became the center of a much larger quilt. These gold fish are swimming in a pond in the center of a garden. It was my first time using Solvy and creating such intricate embroidery with a machine. The wonderful thing about quilt making is the scraps. I do not throw out many of them either. They just keep piling up in another plastic container and end up on a shelf. Then I take time to try to make an orderly arrangement of them and sew them together. In this next picture you see houses made of flower scraps. I have put a slide of how the houses look without all the thread work and how it changes them after I have stitched and stitched. Jack Lenor Larsen stated that if one wants a red piece of cloth to really be “rich in color” one has to have one warp thread be red and one be orange. This reminded me of all those wonderful Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings at the Chicago Art Institute. The observer’s eyes mix the color! I use that premise a lot in my work. In the detail view, you see an unfinished quilt square of some of the houses with layers of embroidery and net. I worked so hard on the piece I stripped the gears of my 28 year old Bernina! I have not finished the piece because I am waiting for the correct machine to complete them. I have titled this piece “Casas de Flores!”. As previously stated, throwing out cloth is not easy for me. In this piece you see navy blue and green in the background which was a motif I created years ago. It could have “stood on its own” as a piece, but I was not comfortable with it as it was. After a lot of thinking and experimentation, I saw a way to combine the original quilt with the new scraps and make a type of repeated design which became the cloth part of the quilt. I then used different thread sizes and colors to attach the scraps and to add textural interest and depth to the piece. Whether my work looks semi-traditional at times or very abstract, my hope is that my love of color and design will give joy to the observer. –Maude Wallace Haeger Thank you, Maude, for sharing your quilt story and for donating many gorgeous quilts to our annual auction! Bid on Maude’s quilt “Go Fish!” along with the other “Playing Favorites” quilts in our 2016 online silent auction, beginning November 14 on www.QuiltAlliance.org. The theme and guidelines for our 2017 Quilt Alliance contest will be announced in January 2017. Stay tuned! Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
Since 1993, the Quilt Alliance has been committed to documenting, preserving, and sharing the stories of quilts and quiltmakers. We care about keeping quiltmaking alive, but also celebrating its history. We shared this passion with Quilters Newsletter Magazine, the grandmother of all quilt magazines, in print since Bonnie Leman began the publication as a black and white newsletter produced out of her home in 1969. We at the Quilt Alliance were saddened to hear that F+W, the magazine’s parent company, announced that the magazine would cease publication. I admittedly don’t read all the quilt magazines. But QNM was one I paid attention to in large part because it cared about quilt history. It regularly published features that celebrated quilt heritage, quilt documentation projects, museum exhibitions, and summaries of quilt scholarship. The magazine, like the Quilt Alliance, perceived the stories of the quilts and quiltmakers of the past as integral to quiltmaking’s future. I was lucky enough to publish a few times in QNM, and always felt honored that a popular publication with large and faithful readership would feature articles by a historian like me. And that’s part of QNM’s legacy. QNM is part of our shared quilt history which the Quilt Alliance aims to preserve. The magazine was instrumental in the late twentieth-century quilt revival, not just through its publication, but through its outreach into the burgeoning world of quilt enthusiasts and its leadership in the quilt industry. For example, QNM sent a touring Quiltmobile around the country in 1976, exhibiting quilts and teaching quilting, which no doubt helped fuel the quiltmaking excitement surrounding the American Bicentennial (we here at the Quilt Alliance are inspired by this… we’ve had our eye out for a camper to drive around the country recording quilt stories). These stories are worth saving, but we can’t do it alone. In 2002, Quilt Treasures—a partner project of the Quilt Alliance, Michigan State University Museum, and Matrix, the Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at MSU—interviewed Bonnie Leman. Our partners created a mini-documentary and web portrait, but the technology supporting this presentation is out of date. watch an excerpt of Bonnie recalling the origins of Quilters Newsletter from her Quilt Treasures portrait.[space height=”10″]
[space height=”10″] Like Quilt Treasures, our oral history project Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories (QSOS) is now in need of conversion to a new platform, so we can continue to fulfill our mission of not only documenting, but also preserving and sharing quilt stories. Please join us as a member today or make a donation. Consider it a subscription to our mission, one that requires fuel and tending to document and sustain our community for years to come. We hope you can help. Posted by Janneken Smucker President of the Board of Directors, Quilt Alliance…
