She sat still, I thought, and yet she traveled. And when one stitches, the mind travels, not the way men do, with ax and oxen through the wilderness, but surely our traveling counted too, as motion. And I thought of the patience of the stitches. Writing a book, I thought, which men often do, but women only rarely, has the posture of sewing. One hand leads, and the other hand helps. And books, like quilts, are made, one word at a time, one stitch at a time. ~ Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer
I don’t know much about quilting. I’ve had little experience with it, other than a brief foray when I was 7 or 8. That was with my grandmother and her sisters, and I’m confident even though she let me “help”, she probably pulled out all of my stitches after I left. However, I have been crocheting since I was about that age and I couldn’t count how many of my own stitches I’ve pulled out to re-do. There’s a word for that; it’s called frogging. Anyway, my grandmothers quilted and my mother has quilted and while I don’t have talent in that direction, I admire those who do. I want to learn more.
A little history
I won’t get deep here, but wanted to share some information I found on the Victoria and Albert Museum site. The art of quilting has been around since the Middle Ages, so it’s possibly north of 700 years old. But what intrigues me about V&A’s article is learning about new uses for “quilts.” Hundreds of years ago, when soldiers wore chain mail, quilted fabric was used for a sort of undershirt, and could also have been used instead of chain mail when the latter article was out of scope financially.
Quilted fabrics were worn for warmth as well, since the finished product was lighter-weight than other options. And, of course, quilts were passed down as heirlooms, whether they were examples of fine stitching or the design or only because there was a sentimental attachment. We still do that, but is anyone quilting these days?
Yes. Still. But the process is a bit different from the days when my grandmother hung the quilt frame from the ceiling and seamstresses lowered it when they had time to sew.
Samples of my friends' work - a few shots are close-ups so you can see the stitching.
The artisans
Recently I called two of my friends to pick their brains about quilting. Each of them has extensive experience with quilt-making and both started before they were old enough to drive. Combined, they have been producing quilts for more than 50 years.
Ellen made her first quilt at age 14. Her mother requested that she sew a quilt for her grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Yes, she had taken a home economics’ class. No, she hadn’t attempted anything of that complexity before. No pressure. Nonetheless, Ellen managed to cut the fabric into blocks, free-hand, and complete the project with few of the tools she had available a few decades later. That is, she had only scissors. Since she didn’t know how to bind the quilt, she had to birth it and hand-tie it. See illustrative pics here.
It was some years before Ellen picked up quilting again because it was cost-prohibitive. She did, however, keep sewing: her clothing, then her kids’ clothing, and then their toys. At about 40, she decided to get a quilting machine, a long-arm that could accommodate large sewing projects. To pay for an expensive upgrade to her machine (~ $8500) and for advanced classes, she began to take commission work. Much later she bought a more sophisticated machine that she could program to facilitate designs.
So what is a challenge for someone with her experience? Appliquéing. If you take a look at the glossary, you’ll see that shortcuts are not an option. On one quilt, she appliquéd paper doll shapes and created different outfits for each one. Then, too, there were those projects done in her business where people outkicked their coverage. That is, she had to clean up botched attempts by inexperienced quilters. Sometimes tops weren’t straight (parallel to bottom) or blocks weren’t pressed with the desired immediacy.
What about the designs? Ellen most often uses patterns and adapts them for her purposes. Designing a quilt from scratch is incredibly complicated. Well, perhaps not the design itself, but determining the exact amount of fabric needed is fraught with potential errors. Nobody has time for that, and certainly no one wants to waste fabric. It’s best to take an established pattern and work off that.
Ellen normally works on queen or lap-size projects and still does some commission work. She also makes quilts for donations and has created them for non-profits to auction.
Susan’s grandmother always sewed, but she probably began to sew as a result of 4-H when she was only 9. She eventually sewed her own clothes, at least for a few years, not so much in college. She moved over to quilting in 1988, perhaps as a result of the value put on handmade quilts compared to handmade clothes. Her interest accelerated when she saw a book about making quilts faster. Since her sister also sewed, they planned an extended visit, and made a whole quilt in short order. The process they used was strip piecing, which made the process faster and more accurate.
Susan’s biggest ongoing challenge? Deciding whether to take on an intermediate/complicated pattern. Sometimes those are fun, but often they can be aggravating. Not what you’re looking for in a hobby.
In spite of her considerable experience, Susan still encounters projects that even she thinks are complicated. One was a barn quilt (see photo gallery, top row) for which she used a shirt of her dad’s to create each of the barn doors. You can see there were many, many farm animals, yes? The blocks with the cows have 75 individual pieces and there were 10 of those blocks. Before completion, which took more than a year, she ran out of fabric, but eventually located what she needed. That makes me anxious and I had nothing to do with it.
Susan feels pretty much the same as Ellen when it comes to designs. She almost always uses a pattern from a book or from online sources, usually making a change on a pattern choice, such as an extra border or color changes. To facilitate that process, Susan has a custom-made design board with a flannel surface on which she lays out a small sample of the pattern. That way, she can more easily visualize the end result and decide on the final fabrics.
Susan frequently makes quilts for newborns and for her grandchildren. She also makes throw-size graduation quilts, generally using the school’s colors. Her plan for the coming year is to work on a few projects for Quilts of Valor and some for hospice care.
Quilting by the numbers
I own several hand-sewn quilts my grandmothers gave me, most made much more than a half-century ago, and a newer one my mother made. However, I have never given much thought to the value. Not the sentimental kind. I’ve thought of that a lot. It’s the labor and materials I hadn’t thought of. Take a look at the numbers, which Ellen and Susan agree is just about right.
- Quality fabric is $7-10 per yard.
- Cost of fabric (including batting and binding) for a baby blanket is about $50, and that’s a small project.
- A king size bed is 7X that size – materials would be about $250.
- Labor, at only $15 an hour, would run in the neighborhood of $600.
- Investment for seamstress:
- Machine itself might be within a range of $6,000 – $30,000.
- 14′ metal frame table could run $400 – $2,000 or more.
- “Small” stuff: needles, electricity, accessories – the total would obviously vary.
At these prices, I think I should probably insure those quilts I was gifted. I’m only half joking. The labor and material investment is significant. And the talent required is impressive. Read on to make sure you get a feel for the lingo and some of their maneuvers.
With regard to quilting, my friends speak in an unknown language. Glossary, anyone?
In each of our respective conversations, Ellen and Susan used unfamiliar terms. Well, unfamiliar to me, anyway. Here is some illumination, in case you don’t happen to be a quilter:
- Appliquéing – cutting out pictures in shapes and attaching them to the top of the quilt. Each piece has to be sewn separately.
- Birthing – putting the layers (top, bottom, and batting) down in appropriate order and sewing around the edge. This leaves an opening for turning the project right side out.
- Custom – quilter hand designs stitching.
- Meander – decorative, curvy line as a design feature.
- Pantograph quilting – a laser light is used to follow lines of the pantograph pattern.
- Quilting – stitching two layers together with batting in between.
- Rotary cutter – useful for cutting multiple layers, but dangerous, I’m told. It’s basically a rolling razor blade.
- Ruler quilting – guides in a straight line to keep material in the right place against the presser foot. This video might be useful:
- Stabilizer – iron-on interfacing.
- Stipple – stitches that might be a curvy line and are often added to compress the material in a small area. If done right it might take a lot of time to execute.
- Stitch in the ditch – outlining quilt blocks by stitching in the seam between pieces, normally on the side of the seam that doesn’t have the bulk of the fabric.
- Strip piecing – sewing strips of fabric together and then using a rotary cutter to create smaller, already-pieced units for the design.
- Tied quilt – manually tying together the three layers with a knot to secure them permanently.
What do you do for the love of it?
As you can see, quilting is not for the faint of heart or for those who crave instant gratification. It has to be a labor of love when it’s done in someone’s home for someone special. And even if it’s done on a transactional basis, there isn’t enough money to compensate for the amount of time it takes if the work itself doesn’t provide satisfaction. That is true no matter how many of the unskilled among us appreciate the art of quilting and are grateful that skill survives.
As for me–before I retired, my time as a trainer and in underwriting were incredibly gratifying. These days I crotchet, and I bake, and I write because those activities give me immense pleasure. And that is all I expect from them. I think those things we go after with a passion are valuable beyond estimation, to ourselves and possibly to others.
You?
I have fond memories of that little one bedroom house where the family room became the quilting bee area. I recall the quilting frame hanging year round high up near the ceiling, only to be lowered for the occasional gathering of her sisters and friends. One thing that fascinated me was that the top of the quilt was often cut from scrap cloth from worn out shirts, skirts or cloth flower sacks. Nothing went to waste in that house. That house never had running water and did not get electricity until mother was 18. The quilting bee room had vertical cast iron coal stove.
I remember it well, especially the stove, called a Warm Morning. One Christmas, when the little room was crowded with family, I burned myself trying to get between it and the wall. There wasn’t quite enough room. : o