“Collaboration of Women through Time”
Hand quilting and handmade bookmaking were brought together in the making of Pieces of History. The book became a joint offering to the spirit of hands-on creativity. Pieces of History: Quilt Patterns from the North Carolina Museum of History was a collaboration of women, an extension of the quilting bee. The book was also a collaboration across time – the centuries-old work of quilters both famous and unknown brought forward in time by current quilters, curators and bookmakers.
The story starts in 1848 with a sixteen-year-old Mary who gathered pieces of silk from family and suitors to construct her Six-Pointed Star quilt. Far from Mary’s thoughts, as she made her tiny stitches, was the granddaughter, who would one day receive the quilt. That future was an unimaginable time, long after the Civil War changed the landscape of Mary’s world.
Another Mary buried her Rose and Coxcomb quilt to hide it from Sherman’s advancing troops during the Civil War. And we meet yet another Mary as she traveled through the country with her doctor husband. She was collecting information about local veterans of World War I to include in her Sky Rocket quilt.
Creating Pieces of History: a Handbound Book about Handmade Quilts, part 1
by Jane Hall and Diane Katz
