Fabric of Their Lives : Quilting Proves to Be an Addictive Pastime for Guild Members

Once a month, 60 to 70 women gather in a church hall in Sierra Madre to discuss their addiction, one that has mostly affected women for several hundred years.

Their addiction is quilting and the ladies of the Wandering Foot Quilt Guild have no intention of giving it up. In fact, they’re pleased to observe that more people are getting hooked all the time. There are about 50 such guilds from San Luis Obispo to San Diego loosely bound together by the Southern California Council of Quilt Guilds.

“The number of guilds in Southern California has nearly doubled in the last three or four years,” says Marge Eakins, a council representative and a charter member of the Wandering Foot Guild.

Eakins, who has been teaching quilting at Temple City High School’s Adult Program for more than 10 years, said the reasons for this resurgence in quilting aren’t certain. Perhaps it’s because of an increase in leisure time or a rediscovered taste for Americana, she suggests.

Glendale has a strong guild that is nearly 14 years old and has more than 200 members including four men.

“We find interest in quilting has grown in the past few years,” says Dorthea Corrigan, president of the Glendale Quilt Guild. “I think people are looking for something relaxing and comforting that’s a break from our fast-paced, highly mechanized lifestyle.”

The guild puts on Southern California’s largest annual show in March at the Glendale Civic Auditorium, Corrigan said. The show includes classes, vendors, an auction and a fashion show of wearable art.

The Wandering Foot Quilt Guild was started seven years ago by a group of women in Arcadia and Sierra Madre and now draws 100 members from all over the San Gabriel Valley.

The guild takes its name from a quilting pattern. According to quilting folklore, the Wandering Foot was the pattern of a quilt given in early American pioneer days to a boy when he set out West.

Contrary to the common misperception that quilting is American in origin, the craft of sewing together multiple layers of material started centuries ago in Europe and Asia, said Sandi Fox, curator of the quilts collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“The dominant American tradition of pieced and quilted bed coverings developed during the 19th Century,” she said.

Traditionally, women worked on communal projects in quilting bees. But members of the Wandering Foot Guild work mostly on individual projects. They meet monthly to exchange ideas about techniques and share in the camaraderie that binds quilters together. The Wandering Foot Guild has one group project, the Opportunity Quilt, which will be raffled off next September to raise money for the group.

Members of the Wandering Foot include homemakers, lawyers, teachers, secretaries, fabric shop owners, nurses, real estate agents and retired women. They range in age from 30 to 80. Until last year, their oldest member was 92 and still going strong, some say, because of her quilting habit. She’s no longer with the guild, because she moved to Kansas.

Members say a surprising number of younger women quilt, but there are still no men in the Wandering Foot Guild.

“We have all levels of expertise, you don’t have to be an expert to be a quilter,” member Mildred Crusberg said.

But quilters do often find that the hobby takes over much of their lives.

“Quilting addicts quilt all the time, at the doctor’s office, almost to the point of stitching at the stop sign,” charter member Shirley Carlson said.

Quilters don’t have to spend a lot of money, because “any fabric is potential quilting material,” Carlson said. However, she admitted that “with new fabrics always available, quilting addicts usually have quite a stash of material in their homes.”

When they’re not stitching, the women of the Wandering Foot like to comb garage sales for antique quilt tops. They often find these unfinished gems, dating from the 1920s and 1930s, for as low as $35 and finish them with loving care, adding the batting and bottom layer. A finished antique quilt can cost between $400 and $1,600.

The women of the Wandering Foot Quilt Guild proudly incorporate quilting and other needle crafts throughout their homes. Living rooms and hallways are decorated with treasured finds from flea markets: wall hangings and miniature quilts or lace draped over the dining room table, coffee table or the piano bench. Carlson’s “Oops” quilt hangs in fellow member Carolyn Snyder’s home. She borrowed the design from a favorite greeting card. It shows a cat perched on a table peering down to a toppled vase of flowers, so it was named the “Oops” quilt.

For guild members, quilting is a labor of love. They couldn’t imagine making a quilt to sell even though they’ve been asked. To keep up with the quilting addiction, the women stitch quilts for children, grandchildren and assorted relatives.

They also quilt for charity. After Carlson’s grandson successfully battled Hodgkin’s Disease with the help of Loma Linda Hospital, she decided to express her gratitude in a special way. Carlson joined with her quilting friends at the Wandering Foot Guild to make 108 comforters for the kids in the hospital’s pediatric cancer ward. The AIDS Babies Organization and Five Acres, a home for troubled youth, have also received the Guild’s handmade quilts.

There’s a literary side to quilting too. The book “Keep Me in Stitches,” published in 1985, contains original quilting poems by Bee Nelly Kuckelman. Displayed on Snyder’s piano is a miniature tome of proverbs and quotations entitled, “Needle Wisdom” by Denise May-Levenick. “Needle Wisdom” contains such words of quilting wisdom as those from a Mrs. W.A. Eudaly in 1924: “Ladies, if you find yourself twisting, turning and looking around when you should be perfectly quiet, try a piece of needlework; it does not hold you aloof from friends or keep you from making more friends, and I have proved to my own satisfaction, that there is no more efficient nerve-tonic.”

Mrs. Eudaly’s testimony is echoed today by the Wandering Foot Guild quilters, who rave about the therapeutic qualities of the hobby. About the only negative thing the quilters have to say about their passion is that threading the especially small eye of the quilting needle is difficult.

Quilters are fond of sayings. One favorite is, “Sleep under a quilt, and you sleep under a blanket of love.” Another, from an unknown source says, “Blessed are the quilters, for they shall be called piecemakers.”

The Wandering Foot Guild is sponsoring its annual auction Saturday at the Sierra Madre United Methodist Church. The auction will feature more than 75 mini-quilts to raise money for the guild. The highest price fetched for a mini-quilt was about $800 last year, but most quilts usually go for less than $100. The funds go toward materials for the quilts as well as to help the Quilt Section of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and to the California Heritage Quilt Assn. Saturday’s Mini-Quilt Auction begins at 1 p.m. and closes at 5 p.m. The church is located at 695 W. Sierra Madre Blvd.

Anyone seeking information on the Glendale Quilt Guild can call Corrigan at (818) 243-4742. Information about the Wandering Foot Guild is available from Eakins at (818) 333-3702.