More Than Just Sew-Sew Interest in Quilt-Making as an Art Form
A dozen years ago, Arlene Lane put her nursing career on hold to pursue other interests. One was quilting, and her first instructor was astonished by Lane’s sewing skills.
When the course ended, the teacher, who was leaving the area, urged Lane to take over the quilt-making class.
“I was shocked,” Lane recalled. “I didn’t really have that much confidence, although I did really feel that what I learned and what I had in my mind to do was coming very easily. It just came quite naturally to me.”
Since then, Lane, who lives in rural Leona Valley, just west of Palmdale, has never gone back to nursing.
She has become one of the region’s busiest quilting instructors, publishing a popular book on the topic and conducting workshops across the nation.
A recent class at Quilters’ Cabin in Lancaster was filled even before the shop mailed its schedule.
Just two years ago, Lane’s teaching schedule took her to Victorville, Montrose, Simi Valley, Glendale, Hemet, Irvine, San Pedro, Bakersfield and other communities on a regular basis as a guest instructor.
She also presented workshops in Houston, San Francisco and Cincinnati.
“I’ve worked a lot of jobs,” Lane, 54, said. “But I’ve never found anything that’s brought me the satisfaction that teaching and being associated with quilting has brought me. I can’t ever picture my life without being a big part of it.”
Lane is far from alone. A surging interest in the ancient textile craft has swept the nation over the past two decades.
The trend is apparent in the Los Angeles area, where quilt association membership figures have been rising steadily with each year. The 13-year-old Antelope Valley Quilt Guild hit a peak with its current 140 members, guild President Betty Putzka said. The group’s two-day quilt show, held each June at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds, draws about 2,000 visitors.
There is a waiting list to join the 300-member San Fernando Valley Quilt Assn. “Our problem was finding a large enough place to meet,” said Pat Scoville, the group’s president.
Because of this space problem, the organization recently split into two groups. Scoville’s association meets in the evenings, while the new Valley Quiltmakers Guild assembles during the day.
Lane believes the quilting revival stems partly from a renewed interest in creating with fabrics. In addition, she said, handmade gifts, which became unfashionable as mass merchandising became more sophisticated, have become popular again.
“Women’s time is so limited,” she said. “They’re raising families. They’re working an eight-hour-a-day job. They’re doing everything that a woman has traditionally done and holding down a job. When you give something that you have made, it shows you care.”
A quilt is the stitching together of two layers of fabric with batting or padded material in between. The top of the quilt usually bears a design. The central batting pushes up between the stitches, giving dimension to the design. The layered technique, which can be used for bedspreads as well as clothing items such as vests or jackets, was developed to provide additional warmth.
“Quilted objects go back further than we can record,” explained Sandi Fox, associate curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “We have evidence of early quilted objects both in terms of floor covering, for example, and clothing in early Egypt.”
Fox is director of the American Quilt Research Center, which opened at the museum in 1988. The museum has about 150 American and European quilts, many from the 18th and 19th centuries. Fox said quilted items are valued for the extra warmth they provide and for their artistic merit.
“The two need not be separated,” she said. “That’s the glory of a functional object. And so even though they may have been used in terms of rugs or floor coverings, they were further embellished.
“By the time we get into the 18th Century, we see a great deal of very extravagant quilting done not just on bed covers but also on the clothing of the period, on fashions for both men and women.”
Changing fashion trends and the emergence of machine-made textiles led to a decline in the craft’s popularity. But, Fox said, “Quilt making never died completely. It redefined itself as new materials and new interests and new activities took place.”
The nation’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976 triggered interest in historic American crafts such as quilt making. But even before that, a new affection for handmade goods had taken hold, Fox said. As a result, quilting-making classes became popular, and many new shops opened to provide fabrics, patterns and manuals exclusively for quilters.
“The great majority of women making quilts in this country make them as gifts or for their own homes,” Fox said. “They make them for the same reasons that people made them in another period--to celebrate rites of passage, for new babies, for brides, to commemorate events.”
Karon Earls of Lancaster, a student in Arlene Lane’s class, has two quilts hanging on the walls of her home--not on a bed.
“One quilt’s got about 200 hours of work in it,” said Earls, a part-time bookstore employee who has been quilting for eight years. “So I’m not going to let anybody sit down and put their feet on it.”
She said she enjoys the camaraderie of quilt-making classes and the sense of creative achievement. “You get that feeling of having accomplished something artistic, something that can be handed down.”
Another of Lane’s students, Carole Stewart of Palmdale, said her son and daughter, though only 6 and 12, have already laid claim to the quilts they want to keep as family heirlooms.
“I have made and sold a couple of quilts. I will never do it again,” Stewart said. “When you’re a textile artist, you just can’t make enough money. You’re lucky to make $2 an hour for the time that’s involved. If you’re going to spend that much time, why not make it into something that your family, your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are going to have?
“I guess we’re in a society where everything is so disposable. It’s nice to be creative with color or patterns and know that it’s going to be here when you’re gone.”
Many of the students have completed other classes with Lane and returned to learn more advanced techniques, said Earls. “Her strength is letting people do what they do best and not making them stick to the rules. She’s just a very encouraging type of person.”
Lane has been a skilled seamstress for years, making clothing for four brothers while growing up and later making clothes for her husband and three children. After her first quilting course, she slipped easily into the role of teacher.
“It kind of scared me too,” she recalled, “because I think teaching a class is a big responsibility. If you inhibit or you intimidate them, you can turn them off. And you may have lost a potential quilter, a potential creative person. So I take it very seriously.”
She did extensive research and spent about a year writing her quilting book, “Applique: An Effective New Approach. “ Applique, Lane’s specialty, is the technique of sewing pieces atop a background fabric. She and her husband, Ted, supervised the publishing and marketing of the book, and Lane said it has sold more than 20,000 copies. She is considering a commercial publisher’s offer to take over printing and distribution of the book.
Lane’s heavy teaching schedule has left her little time to do her own quilting. But one of her creations, which took 18 months to complete, earned second prize in its class at the American Quilting Society Competition in 1986. She is currently at work on another competition quilt.
Lane said the financial gain from more than a decade of teaching quilting has been quite modest. The main reward, she said, comes from her students. “I think watching them blossom and grow--that’s probably the greatest satisfaction I get.
“I had one little gal in a class that I taught in Montrose who had never threaded a needle. She was very shy about it. She kind of put her head down, and I said, ‘Don’t feel bad. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.’ So I showed her how to get started. By the time that class was over, that girl was doing applique like I have never seen anyone do applique. Her work was so beautiful. I told her, ‘You will go on to do great and wondrous things.’ ”