How A Quilt Artist Transformed A Simple Craft Into An Art Form

Try to imagine what it’s like to grow up on a remote property in a cold climate. Every day is a struggle for survival. You can’t afford to waste a thing. What little money that comes in through your labors is spent on necessities like clothing for your family. You wear those clothes until they are almost completely worn out.

Nothing goes to waste because everything has value. When your clothes are too worn out to patch together again, you keep whatever scraps you can and make patchwork quilts out of them. The first quilt sets ever made were sewn by hand like this. The were items made from necessity.

A couple of thin pieces of material aren’t going to keep you or your family warm in the winter, but you notice that your geese and ducks are always warm. They fluff out their feathers and are insulated from the cold. You start to collect their feathers and fill your quilts with them. You separate the big feathers from the down and when you’ve got enough down, you make a quilt filled with down. That’s luxury!

You have plenty of time to kill through the long winter days and nights. With nothing else to divert your attention, you devote your time to making a special quilt and pillow cases from the best bits of cloth in your collection. You fill this quilt and those pillows with the best goose down you have. Instead of keeping them for your own use, you sell them in the local market.

One day a well-heeled woman notices one of your beautiful down quilts. She appreciates the craftsmanship, but doesn’t approve of the rough material you have used. She offers to pay you to make her a quilt using finer clothes. Of course you accept.

No one can say for sure who made the first luxury quilt set, but it’s a good bet its origin was something like that described above. Even though modern quilts are rarely hand-stitched, there is still a mystique about patchwork quilts. As a matter of fact, a famous quilt artist learned her craft by stitching together quilts in a tiny stone dwelling in her freezing Orkney island home.

This quilt artist lives on an isolated property in the Kentucky hills. Her quilts, however, are hanging in major galleries throughout the country and even overseas. She hasn’t changed her lifestyle all that much, though. Her husband doesn’t cut firewood with a hand saw, but he does cut it himself, using husqvarna chainsaws.

Is there a moral to this story? Maybe not, but it’s true. Sometimes, the most humble craft can evolve into high art.