Story Quilting

I always thought I’d enjoy quilting if it weren’t for all the cutting and sewing.  But really, it’s not like I don’t do needlecrafts.  I learned to sew in 4-H Club during the early seventies and made my own prom dresses (did I mention it was the seventies?).  Compulsive cross stitching got me through some difficult times; I finally learned to knit a few years ago and have moved well beyond scarves.  But, seriously--quilting?  All those pointy corners and multiple layers to work with?  It just seemed so precise. I love the finished product but didn’t think I had it in me to make one myself.  Plus, they’re so big! 

Turns out, there’s more than one way to make a quilt.  The Gee’s Bend quilters are six generations of African American women in Gee’s Bend, a tiny community in southern Alabama, who learned to sew out of necessity as young girls.  They designed the tops of their quilts individually--using their personal visions to choose colors and patterns--and quilted them communally.  Their creations were colorful, expressive, practical pieces of art that drew the attention of visual artists in other parts of the country and were featured in “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend”, an exhibition of seventy quilts that toured the United States.  The photographs of the quilts in the exhibit were published in 2002 in a book with the same title that I noticed a year or so ago on display at my local Mt. Vernon, Iowa library.  What caught my eye was the way the quilts’ strips and blocks didn’t necessarily line up or repeat themselves, but were pleasing in their lopsided way.  And the stitches were large and didn’t run in straight lines.  I liked the imprecision. 

So I wanted to make one, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked.  There are published patterns for Gee’s Bend quilts, but the Gee’s Bend quilters didn’t use patterns—they just made them up as they went along, which is what makes the quilts so unique.  I wasn’t sure how to go about doing this until my dear sister-in-law, quilter Cindy Loope, took me to an exhibit in the International Quilt Study Center and Museum in her native Lincoln, Nebraska—“Yvonne Wells’ Quilted Messages.”  On display were a variety of small “story” quilts, all with their very own titles and vivid, incredibly appealing primitive images.   Wells, an African American folk artist and former physical education teacher also from Alabama, made her first quilt when her home was being renovated and she was cold.  She loved making quilts that told stories and said “What my head sees, my heart feels, and my hand creates.”   I stood for a long time looking at one of her quilts that looked like the floor of my younger son’s room when he was a teenager.  In it she used up all her scraps from other fabric projects and even included a tube sock.  I thought:  I want to do this. 

With Cindy’s and my quilter friend Cathy’s encouragement and advice, I set about finishing my own version of these beautiful freeform quilts--more Gee’s Bend than Yvonne Wells--and it turned out great.  It’s on its way right now to my oldest son in New York City. I’m ready to think about making one with more of a story theme for my youngest—definitely with a sock or two in it.