Sewing Friendships : Women of All Walks Discover Art--and Therapy--of Quilting

Thousands of women in the San Fernando Valley have a secret.

They quilt.

Young women, old women, even a handful of men. Jann Lawson of Woodland Hills, for instance. Only one of her children is still in school, and now she quilts virtually every day.

“I love the color and the fabrics and the texture,” she said. “And I love geometry.” Eminently portable, her quilting allows her to express herself creatively. It reduces stress. “It’s very soothing just to sit there, working with the needle,” she said.

It also makes her part of a large and growing sisterhood. At the meetings of any of the dozens of quilt associations in Southern California, Lawson said, you will find women who range in age from their 20s to their 80s. They are engineers, teachers, homemakers, attorneys, nurses.

According to Lawson, the Valley representative to the Southern California Council of Quilt Guilds, there are 68 quilting associations between San Diego and Santa Barbara, with an average membership of 150.

The Valley Quiltmakers has 200 members. The San Fernando Valley Quilt Assn. has 250 members and a two-year waiting list. One Valley-based group, Quilters for Others, makes quilts for the needy, including battered women, former prostitutes, the developmentally disabled and babies with AIDS.

There are guilds of quilters in Simi Valley, Lancaster, Calabasas and Glendale. When a new group was formed last month in the Conejo Valley, 135 women showed up at the first meeting. The group, which will meet Monday for the second time, is already full.

One of the most traditional of the needle arts, quilts were first made in this country by women who pooled their scraps of fabric to make something utilitarian--covers for their families’ beds. As so often happens, the women made the objects beautiful as well as useful. And they took pleasure in being together, discussing the things that mattered to them as they undertook their collective enterprise.

A contemporary quilt store, such as Quilt Emporium in Woodland Hills or Quilt ‘n’ Things in Montrose, is not a quiet place. Women often go there to quilt with other people, even when working on their own piece of a larger quilt. There’s talk and laughter, as well as meticulous piecing and stitching.

Linda Higgins, owner of the Woodland Hills shop, describes the local quilting community as a vast underground with thousands of members. There are 4,000 women, “and about four men,” on her mailing list, Higgins said. She has 14 instructors who give lessons in the shop.

In the quilting business for more than 15 years, Higgins has seen a dramatic surge in its popularity. “When we started, there were maybe five books on quilting,” she said. “Now I have over 400 titles in my store, plus magazines.” Local newsstands carry almost a dozen magazines that cater to quilters. For her, Higgins said, the best measure of how much quilting has grown is that the business has been able to support her for the last seven years.

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Some Valleyites make traditional quilts, using the patterns favored by Appalachian and Amish women; others make highly creative art quilts. Some make every stitch by hand, including the tedious running stitch that is the basic unit of quilting. Others use computer software to help design their quilts and whip them up on high-tech sewing machines. According to Higgins, machine quilting is newly respectable, especially among working women. “You can pay $3,000 for a machine that will do your quilting for you,” she said.

Diversity is a mark of the local quilting community. Los Angeles is home to a guild of African American quilters. Valley quilters include a group of social-activist Jewish quilters who met through the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Van Nuys.

Called the Hamish Amish Quilters, the group briefly managed to make quilting controversial several years ago when it included a portrait of Ethel Rosenberg, convicted and executed on charges of spying for the Soviets, in their second quilt, called “Women’s History: A Patchwork of Many Lives.” (Their first attempt at quilt making was a traditional Amish quilt.)

The women debated whether Rosenberg should be included, along with anthropologist Margaret Mead, singer Buffy Saint-Marie, writer Maya Angelou and others. Finally, they decided her place was justified as a representative of McCarthy-era persecution and for her work as a labor organizer.

The dozen Hamish Amish quilters and their artistic consultant, Seymour Kaplan of Van Nuys, recently finished a second themed quilt, called “Ellis Island.”

Made up of sepia-toned patches on a deep red background, the quilt is a capsule history in fabric of the immigrant experience. The patches are based on photographs of the quilters’ families, all of whom passed through Ellis Island as they fled persecution and lack of opportunity in Eastern Europe, as well as historic photos of the Jewish East Side of New York early in this century.

Anne Becker’s mother, for instance, is shown as a child with her parents in Eastern Europe and also on a poster for a Yiddish theater production she appeared in, as Regina Berger, after she had come to this country. (Becker lives in Van Nuys.)

The Hamish Amish Quilters said art was only one of their goals in making the quilt. It is also concerned with social justice, the theme reflected in patches that show the horrors of child labor and tenement sweatshops. Ethel Rosenfeld of Sherman Oaks explained that the current controversy over immigration was very much in their minds as they worked on the quilt. “We are the children of immigrants,” she said. “We felt this was a nation of immigrants. That’s what we have always said. And we felt we should have open borders.”

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Hamish is the Yiddish word meaning “homey” or “friendly,” and the group thought it was an apt and memorable name for Jewish quilters who were inspired by Amish needleworkers, whose classic quilts they had seen at a local museum.

Both the women’s history quilt and the Ellis Island quilt will be displayed throughout the day today at a multicultural festival entitled “Fitting In . . . In America,” at the Skirball Cultural Center and Museum in Los Angeles. The Hamish Amish Quilters will also give demonstrations.

Many local quilters say they most value the social aspects of the craft. “I guess it’s what you call therapy,” said Mary Moya, of West Hills. She belongs to three formal quilting associations in the Valley, plus three mini-groups that meet twice a month.

Lawson, who is in one of the mini-groups with Moya, agreed. As they have stitched together, Lawson and her fellow quilters have talked about virtually every aspect of their lives: successes, divorces, surgeries, professional triumphs, births and deaths.

“You sort of hold each other up,” she said. “You give each other support and ideas on how to handle things.” The quilt that you make is lovely, she said, but so is the community you form. “You find out you’re not really alone out there.”