|
|
|
|
|
|
Rebecca :
I have been a quilter most of my life, helping my mother with her marvellous hexagon creations back in England during WWII. Now I live in the Pacific Northwest where I joined the Wild Olympic Women quilting bees when we'd raffle off the finished quilts to make money for Salmon saving projects. When did you first start quilting?
Mary :
These are wonderful questions. I was introduced to quilts by my grandmother - when she would share the family heirlooms she had in her home in Monticello, Iowa during my visits from New England - when I would be reporting back to her on what I had learned about our family history.
In 1970, she gave me some 8 inch wool squares that she had carefully cut from unworn areas of coats and trousers with the request that I make her a quilt. She had seen one and had drawn the plan on the back of a brown paper bag. I gave the quilt to her for Christmas in 1971. I didn't know a thing about quilt making so I pieced the blocks together with grossgrain ribbon and backed it with a cotton polyester fabric. I also stitched antique buttons from her button bag at the intersections of the squares.
Rebecca :
That sounds so much like the homesteader lap quilts two elderly daughters of the settlers out here taught me. What is the difference between quilting & a patchwork comforter?
Mary :
The difference is the definition of terms and processes. Quilting is the process of making quilts but also the description of the stitches used to hold the layers together. Patchwork is the term to describe and define the piecing together of two pieces of fabric in the making of the top. The word “comforter” refers to the layers when they are tied together instead of quilted. For me, I use the broadest definition of the term “quilt” - a textile sandwich held together with thread. This allows me the opportunity to not eliminate some wonderful quilts and stories were to I use a narrower definition for the word “quilt.”
Rebecca :
My mother had a set of metal hexagon templates & then we cut out paper ones around which to tack the fabric before sewing the rosettes together. Did the Pioneer Women work from templates, if so of what were they made?
Mary :
Yes, they used paper and metal. My grandmother and great aunt had cardboard templates. One of the women in my Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations, Elizabeth Jane Rogers Shephard's husband made her a brass pattern for her to cut the many, many thousands of 3/4inch squares for her cotton quilts.
Rebecca :
I know what being a housewife is, what is a “housewife”?
Mary :
A housewife was a textile holder of sewing notions and threads. It was portable for a woman to keep the needed items with her as she worked on her sewing projects. Men also had housewives, sometimes called needlebooks, to hold their supplies for repairing their clothing. It was sort of an early sewing kit.
Rebecca :
How did you find the families who preserved these treasures?
Mary :
I was given personal referrals to individuals who owned quilts or access to the donor records in public and private collections. As a researcher, I'm also part detective. One of my friends thinks I should work as a private detective.
Rebecca :
Yes, there must have been a lot of detective work, following the clues! What would you say to someone eager to begin learning how to quilt?
Mary :
Be careful to choose a pattern that they know they will be able to complete, one that will draw them back to the project until it is done, and one that is realistic in terms of the demands of time. Probably, avoid any Grandmother's Flower Garden and choose instead a four patch or strip quilt pattern.
Rebecca :
That was what drew me to the homesteader lap quilts - I could finish them! My mother seemed to be eternally working on her complicated hexagon quilts. How did you find out that the Mormon Pioneer Women were quilters?
Mary :
A Utah woman wrote a review of Treasures in the Trunk, when I wrote her complimenting her on her kind words, she said that book had inspired her to
do a research project on Mormon-made coverlets. I asked if there were quilts and she replied there were many! We received a Utah Humanities Council Research Grant for me to go to Salt Lake City and investigate for a book. Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations is the result of that initial grant and three years of research and writing.
Rebecca :
Were their descendants thrilled to show you their heirlooms & do they also quilt?
Mary :
Yes, they were thrilled and honored that I was interested in their family
heirloom quilts. They had treasured them within their families and now here
was someone else who sought them out and was thrilled by their makers' stories. Some of them quilt and some do not. But, all have a profound appreciation for their heritage and the effort the women undertook to relocate and establish themselves and their families in the arid regions of the Intermountain West.
Rebecca :
How & where are these treasures now stored? Can some of these quilts be seen by the general public?
Mary :
Most of these quilts are in public collections in Utah. Most are in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Pioneer Museum at 300 North Main Street in Salt Lake City. Others are in the Church Museum of History and Art also in Salt Lake City and the remainder are in the Territorial Statehouse Museum in Fillmore, Utah. A couple are in the This is the Place State Park in Salt Lake City.
The quilts at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers(DUP) Museum are on display. They are folded and stored on glass shelves in the museum so all descendants and guests can see their family heirlooms whenever they visit. The others may or may not be out on display. In that case, it is wise to contact the museum in advance for an appointment to see a particular quilt.
Rebecca :
Who was C. C. A. Christensen whose paintings so richly illustrate the Migration & Settlement?
Mary :
He was the Mormon emigrant pioneer commissioned by the Church to paint the migration as something the average person would be able to accomplish. He was Danish and had emigrated in 1857.
Rebecca :
You write that the Mid period of the Mormon Migration (1860-1890) was a time of isolation, can you tell us why & in what ways do the quilts of that period differ from before & after?
Mary :
This is a long involved answer. So I refer you to the introduction parts of the book for the time periods of 1856-1869 and 1870-1890 and to the Appendix A about features of the quilts made in Utah.
Basically, this was the time period when Brigham Young imposed economic,
political and social isolation on the Pioneers. They were to produce the items they most needed for their daily living and household activities. They were not to buy from outside or from merchants outside the Church who happened to pass through Utah. Travel outside the territory was not encouraged unless the men were going on missions to recruit new saints.
Women were to network among themselves for the things they needed. The quilts that were produced were made of Utah produced fabrics or remnants of fabrics used for their purposes. Dyes were home produced and lacked the quality of color that fabrics produced in other parts of the country had by this time. Quilts made by active women (raising children, maintaining a household) tended to be utilitarian in style, lacking detail in quilting designs, etc. Yet, quilts made by older women, freed of household leadership responsibilities, tended to be more masterful in technique and construction. But, this was later on, as they grew older.
Rebecca :
Did the descendants know if the fabrics were from clothes the Pioneer women & their families actually wore or were the fabrics always new, especially designated for the quilts?
Mary :
The most unique fabric was from a coat traded to a soldier in the Johnson Army made by Lucinda Barnes Smith (#II-5). Another unique quilt was the one made from a dress she made for her daughter by Eliza Spencer Moses (#III-9). Her daughter wore the dress in front of Brigham Young soon after arriving in Utah in 1861 and was told it had too much fabric in the skirt, the neckline was too low, and the sleeves too full. The embarrassed daughter never wore the dress again and her mother made the quilt from it to salvage the fabric, most likely brought with them to Utah when they migrated in 1861 from Connecticut. An interesting story about the influence of Brigham Young.
It is important to note that when people say quilts were made from scraps of fabrics, they do not mean worn out clothes. They mean, instead, that the scraps were leftovers from when pattern pieces were cut from the cloth.
Rebecca :
Was it very difficult to keep both your books to less than 300 pages? Did you just want to keep writing, learning & adding?
Mary :
Oh yes! Although I felt it important to include enough just to tell the story. The difficult part was working with an editor who had never done a quilt book before and who wouldn't listen.
Did you know that Treasures in the Trunk had won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Outstanding Design and Marketing in 1994? The format and design had been my idea and working with the first editor was a joy and a great reward.
Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations was to have followed the same format & I had to fight hard to keep it that way - two pages per quilt requiring the reader to only have to open the book to read about one quilt and not have to turn the page to learn more. The editor was fired but not until I made a special trip to Nashville from Portland to layout the pages exactly as they were supposed to be.
I also had to work hard to protect the credibility and respect I had received from my new friends and colleagues within the Mormon history world. I felt I could not offend them or ignore my pledge to write an accurate and fair history of the women and their quilts. Those treasured friendships continue today as we still work together to bring their quilt history to the broader world outside the region. An example is the quilt exhibition and panel presentation I led for the Fifth Women's West Conference at Washington State University in Pullman in 2000. I was able to borrow a quilt from the Church Museum for the three month exhibit.
Rebecca :
Your answers have given me a lot of insights into the history of the quilting world, is there anything else you would like to say?
Mary :
Yes! I have been mentoring several people who are writing papers for the American Quilt Study Group Annual Seminar. I also have contributed to the history of a Washington State quiltmaker whose work is in the Smithsonian Institution and which will be featured in an exhibition of the Alaska State Quilt Project this year(2001) in Anchorage.
In this area, I will be curating an exhibition entitled “Quilted Gardens” for the Museum of the Oregon Territory for this coming summer(2001).
I hold an annual retreat for the Columbia-Willamette Quilt Study Group in
February near Portland. Perhaps, you would like to attend. It's February
18-20th. The scholar in residence this year will be Gina Darlington, the dancer from Flagstaff, Arizona who created a contemporary dance program based on Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations. It will be fun. Contact me at: mbcquilt@web-ster.com.
Rebecca :
Mary, being a history buff & a quilter, I am so excited by these books of yours, you have given me & all quilters a great gift. Thank you!
(Published January 07, 2001)
|
|
RebeccasiReads.com
