A Love Letter to America(n Quilts)

stitching as a practice of devotion

I’m writing to you from College Station, Texas where thunder and lightening are forecast. We are packing up our possessions and getting ready for our flight home tomorrow evening. Somehow we’ve managed to travel for seven weeks using just two large Samsonite cases which my in-laws kindly lent to us. Baulkier items and outfits Toby grew out of were left up in Montana, but for the most part we have travelled relatively light.

Scrolling through my camera roll this afternoon it became clear that I have a thing for the handmade quilts which form such a central part of American culture. As I mentioned in my note yesterday, the most beautiful quilt I’ve come across in the US was one I saw in Brenham’s Heritage Museum. It was made in 1910 by Leola Dever Bailey and was part of an exhibit honouring the creativity of the town’s black residents, most of whom either worked on or are descended from the area’s enslaved cotton plantation workers. When slavery was abolished these people formed ‘Freedom Colonies’ which remain culturally influential to this day.

I find quilts moving to look and think about. Ellen, the protagonist in my novel, is a quilter, and grapples with the culturally reinforced narrative that quilting is a craft rather than an art form. I think the beauty of this hand-stitched quilt rather speaks for itself.