

Turning Pieces Into Masterpieces: The Art Of Quilting

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The art of quilting today is much more than an old-fashioned hobby to keep Grandma busy while the rest of the world changes with the times. Although it is an ancient craft, quilting has never looked so new. Along with the traditional designs from past centuries, we now find innovative paths for the needle and thread to explore. In homes across America, more and more quilts are appearing in unexpected places, sharing wall space with other works of art and closet space with other wardrobe essentials, while looking nothing like their predecessors. By merging modern materials, tools, and ideas with time-honored techniques, generations of creative women—and a growing number of men—have redefined the art of quilting.

Piecing Together the History of Quilts
Common knowledge credits the ancient Egyptians as the first quilt makers, but pinning down a starting date is tricky, as a survey of various sources demonstrates. traces the origins of quilting to a patchwork canopy for an Egyptian queen to 960 B.C., and cites a pieced leather funeral pall from Egypt dating back to 1100 B.C. travels even further back in time for the craft’s roots, mentioning a carved ivory figurine of a first-dynasty pharaoh from 3400 B.C. that was clad in a quilted garment.

What is less disputed is the fact that quilting was an idea that served practical, economic, and esthetic purposes all at once. Scraps of fabric discards could now be put to prudent use in the new art of quilting, and the layering system supplied needed insulation.
The kaleidoscope of fabric pieces presented intriguing design challenges, prompting the creation of a new sewing discipline that produced beautiful objects. During the Crusades, knights wore quilting under their armor to provide warmth against chills, protection from blows, and cushioning for chafing. Primitive stuffed-sack quilts doubled as mattresses and coverlets in medieval times, and the Japanese used a crazy-quilt method to embellish screens, hangings, and clothing. In the nineteenth century, women met regularly for quilting bees, and their patchwork bedcovers became a staple of American life.

From Quilting Bees to Quilting Ease
In the last 50 years, quilting has enjoyed an increasing popularity as both a functional item and an artistic statement. Technology has revolutionized the art, yielding computerized sewing and quilting machines that greatly reduce the timeframe for completing projects once done by hand, and there is a huge industry devoted to state-of-the-art quilting supplies. Modern conveniences have fueled new ways of designing, constructing, and using quilts, with some very imaginative consequences.

Mass Media
Tailors throughout the world have traditionally used cotton, wool, or silk in their quilts, with intended usage dictating fabric choice. Despite the introduction of new synthetic cloths, cotton is still the preferred medium for quilts that withstand heavy use as bedspreads or blankets. In the past few decades, however, quilting techniques have increasingly been applied to fabric much as painting strokes are brushed on canvas, creating one-of-a-kind pieces that are displayed as art.
In this new role, quilts are usually dry-cleaned instead of laundered, so a whole world of modern textiles is now open to the quilter.

You can find quilt artwork that flaunts this new freedom of choice with corduroy, velvet, satin, or a mixed-media combination of different fabrics. Quilts are also now dressed up and accessorized with laces, braids, ribbons, cording, buttons, beads, sequins, metallic thread, or virtually anything that can be attached to cloth. Many quilters bring more depth to their creations by incorporating trapunto techniques into their quilts. Trapunto quilting features shapes outlined with running stitches and padded from beneath to achieve a raised effect. Today’s new art quilts are an interesting mix of textures and figures, offering more of a three-dimensional look than conventional quilts.

Painting with Needle and Thread
It was only a matter of time before someone decided to take the quilt art idea to its logical conclusion by creating oil paintings without the need for messy oil paints. Thanks to advanced photocopying technology, any image can be duplicated, enlarged, miniaturized or transferred, so talented quilters now create highly detailed quilt “paintings” based on existing works of art or their own designs. Subtle shadings of fabric color and meticulous representations of minute details lend an incredibly realistic quality to these masterpieces. People who see these quilts at shows and competitions often find it hard to believe that they are staring at a series of pieced-together bits of fabric rather than an oil painting created by an artist’s skilled hand.
Smile and Say “Cheese”
Modern photocopying capabilities include printers that accommodated sheets of fabric, allowing quilters to transfer any photograph, drawing, or printed text onto cloth. This has given the art of quilting a level of personalization unheard of before, as Grandma can now sew together squares that bear the likenesses of her grandkids, the lines of her favorite poems, or the recipes for her famous pies. Almost anything can now be sewn into a quilt, so everyone with a little imagination and a desire to explore it can make unique quilts, pillows, or accessories.

Out of the Bed and Into the Closet
With all this attention focused on the art of quilting, crafty people have made their fortunes on wearable art. Adorning clothing with quilted work dates back to ancient civilizations, but now the concept is being taken to its extreme. Quilted vests, jackets, and coats are customary (and costly) side attractions at most quilt exhibitions, and you can find accessories such as eyeglass holders, wallets, slippers, and hats made of patchwork or accented with trapunto. Quilted purses, handbags, backpacks, and totes are popular items, and they make excellent beginner projects for quilters because they are small and therefore take much less time to make than a full-sized quilt. Sewers cam also personalize items with photos or other images that are meaningful to the wearer.

Grandma Would Be Proud
Traditionalists still make quilts that look like the coverlets that pioneer women sewed by candlelight, although most professional quilters now prefer machine quilting to hand quilting.

Over the years, advances in sewing supplies and quilting techniques have made the craft much easier for modern sewers and have given the completed projects more dimension and color than ever before.
Quilts designed by renowned professionals in the field can command prices in the tens of thousands of dollars.

These classic quilts and their most avant-garde counterparts share a common thread of learning in the underlying principles of quilting that have been passed down for generations. Even those who have revolutionized the quilting world have started out with training in the fundamentals of classic quilting. Expert longtime quilters such as Georgia Bonesteel pass on their expertise through television programs, quilting classes, and instructional books. The mass media and its virtual marketplace have contributed much to the surge of interest in quiltmaking of all kinds.

The art of quilting is a labor of love that challenges the hands, the mind, and the heart, but it is a rewarding one. As famed quilter Georgia Bonesteel writes in the introduction to her Patchwork Potpourri, “Those who do not sew are just missing out on a lot of fun.”   Why not give the art of quilting a try?

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