Page 66 - The Hunt - Fall 2022

VINTAGE
says. “As children, we played with scraps of fabric and pretty buttons. I started seriously sewing in about the seventh grade.”
Today, Irvine’s Wilmington studio is filled with fabrics, quilts in progress and books about quilting. There’s also a Brother sewing machine with an attached computer screen. “Every quilter has a fabric stash,” she says, opening the door to a long closet, its shelves stacked with hundreds of pieces of cloth.
Irvine is a “piecer”—someone who arranges and sews together swatches of cloth to create the colorful, artistic tops of the “fabric sandwich.” Then she sends it away to another artisan for the filling and backing.
Although quilting is complex in its history and heritage, its techniques and usages can
be boiled down to three basic types: piecing, whole-cloth and appliqué. With piecing (or piecework) quilts, various pieces of fabric (historically remnants of garments sometimes cut into squares) are sewn together for the top. Whole-cloth is a single piece of fabric that may have a print of something that
emphasizes the stitching. Appliqué is where a whole-cloth or pieced quilt is decorated with other things sewn onto it.
As an example of a variation called channeling, Johnson points out a whole- cloth quilt from the 18th century called a Calamanco. The quilter would pre-stitch channels on the fabric, then push or pull stuffing through the channels to create
a raised pattern. Johnson also shows off
a compass quilt of Quaker origin and a Baltimore album version made by multiple seamstresses, with each piece signed in stitching by its creator. Another quilt with
a “turkey-red” color identifies its Camden, New Jersey, origins. It’s worth noting that Winterthur offers specialized tours of its quilt collection by reservation.
Quilting remains a social activity. “We call them quilting bees today,” Johnson says of the stitching get-togethers. “In the 18th century, they were called quilting frolics.”
Today’s quilters also get together regularly with local groups to work on quilts for
charity. “Sometimes there are round-robins of small friendship groups that make a quilt with a theme,” says Irvine.
Not all quilters are women. Gwynedd’s Guy Bush started quilting years ago as a relaxing artistic outlet. He later taught his wife, Suzanne, the craft. “But we don’t quilt together,” says Bush, who makes piecework quilts mainly for family or charity auctions. “I really don’t like appliqué.”
Irvine, Liska and Bush also attend national or regional quilting shows to buy cloth, as there are few local fabric stores these days. Both grandmothers, Liska and Irvine hope to continue the long family heritage of quilting. “I’m repeatedly giving family members quilts of all sizes, starting from the very smallest baby quilts to larger, king-size bed quilts,” Liska says. “Grandchildren included.”
Irvine echoes this. “I’ve made many baby quilts for our two grandsons, each of them with a personalized message label from ‘Granma,’” she says. “I’ll live within them forever. That’s part of my legacy to them.” TH
64 THE HUNT MAGAZINE fall 2022