♪ >> male announcer: Major funding for The Great American Quilt Revival has been provided by The Warm Company, maker of warm and natural batting and other products that inspire creativity in your quilting, crafting, sewing, and home decorating projects.

[wistful fiddle music] ♪ ♪ >> The quilt started out on the bed, probably you were born in, in the 1800s.

There was a quilt there, as a child, covering you up.

There was a quilt there when you got married, probably a special wedding quilt if you were very fortunate.

There was another quilt there when you gave birth to your own children, and there was a quilt there when you died.

And for some people, you were even wrapped in that quilt and put in the ground.

So, historically, quilts have a very close connection to all the passages of our life.

>> I've always believed that they're a measure of human creativity.

How can, you know, one square--you can do all these-- I mean, that's the human mind.

That's to be admired.

>> You see the whole story of people's lives in those quilts.

Sometimes they're wonderful and sometimes heartbreaking.

>> If you think about a pattern as a door into some other world, then I think you're getting a little bit closer to the way I think about it.

>> To me, there is an element of emotion that is reflected in a quilt, that you can almost feel coming off of this quilt.

>> But I think the incredible response at quilt shows tells us that quilt-making touches something very basic, something very human in all of us.

>> I'll tell you what my husband says.

My husband, who has appreciated what I've done all my life, will go to a quilt show with me, and he said he'll sit back and watch the crowd, and he'll say, "Do you know what's happening?"

He said, "The women are emoting in front of these quilts."

>> Whether they're now hung on walls or not, their original function was to be used.

And all folk arts, I think, are made--are essentially made by the people who use them.

And that's what makes quilts so powerful.

>> Bonesteel: I think there is both magic and mystery in the making of a quilt.

The actual object becomes far more than the sum of its parts.

I'm Georgia Bonesteel.

And since the early 1970s, I've been preaching and teaching the gospel of quilting anywhere I can-- first in a community college, then through books, and on public television.

Quilting took over my life.

Through the busy blur of time filled with family and quilt projects, teaching, and traveling, it was sometimes hard to see the bigger pattern and meaning of quilting as it changed through the years.

With the help of many of the people who know it best, this is my look back, back into the story of the transformation of quilting and how it went from the tops of beds to the walls of galleries in a movement that has become known as The Great American Qu ilt Revival.

Exploring one of the many enormous quilt shows that take place every year, I'm amazed at just how many brilliant quilts are here.

Traditional designs meet the avant-garde, personal storytelling, and political statements.

The variety is remarkable.

It's a wonderful confluence of art, cloth, color, culture, history, emotion, and experimentation.

This fantastic display is the result of a development that has paralleled the growth of America itself.

The quilts that arrived to the New World with colonial immigrants characterized the various cultures of their origin.

As these quilts wore out, new ones were made from whatever fabric was available.

As generations of mothers taught their daughters and granddaughters to quilt, methods were reinvented; techniques and designs were refined or simplified, always drawing on the new country's resources and experiences.

This was a 300-year process filled with as many variations as the landscape itself that created what we now know as the American quilt.

But as the 20th century began, quilting was still thought of as only a folk craft with little recorded history or instruction.

Soon all that would change, and today, quilting is enjoyed by more than 20 million people in the United States alone.

It all began one summer afternoon in 1968 at a roadside flea market in rural Pennsylvania, when Jonathan Holstein and Gail Vanderhoof fell head over heels for a simple and colorful quilt.

>> We loved to go to antique shows and whatnot on weekends.

And we would just look around.

We didn't have a lot of money to buy a lot of things, but we were enjoying life.

and one day, we started looking at quilts.

In those days, there were stacks of quilts, of utilitarian quilts.

The only real market for quilts was for high-style appliqué quilts, beautifully made, or quilts that were provably very old or that had important historical connections.

We were visually interested in the peace quilts, the--what were called utilitarian quilts, and no one collected those.

They were not even considered, in those days, a category of American folk art.

And the more quilts we saw, the more astounded we were, because we began to realize that some of these extraordinary, sparely designed geometric quilts with brilliant color combinations had been made by American women during the height of Victorian fussiest decoration.

And we looked at a crazy quilt from 1896, which embodied all of the over-elaboration of Victorian design, and then we'd look at some unbelievable spare quilt with the same date on it, and it didn't make any sense.

It made no sense aesthetically, and it made no sense socially.

And it was that big problem-- because it seemed like a problem to us-- that really began the intellectual interest.

But the visceral interest was there from the beginning.

Some American genius or geniuses understood that you could take a single block--now, there had been blocks in the borders of English and early American quilts of the 18th century.

But someone had the genius thought of saying, "Hey, we can take these little blocks and make big blocks, which are very quick and easy to make, and we can sew those suckers right on our lap.

We can accumulate a bunch of them, and when we get enough, we'll sew them together.

And you can make a great one with just four patches or just nine patches, so let's make whole quilts with these blocks."

That was the great step.

That was the American genius.

It was like Henry Ford with his production lines.

It's true this was a time-saving device, but visually, it created extraordinary masterwork, so there was a combination of reductive work methods, a kind of simplified approach to design, a kind of flatness, wonderful bold use of color, much less restrained than, say, there would have been in England.

So the work method informed the aesthetic, and the aesthetic informed the work method, and that synergy created that really distinctive American design.

But we collected for two years, and by that time, we had about 100 quilts.

And we were showing these quilts--most of our friends were artists--and we were saying to people, whose art-- American artists always have very interesting tastes, and we were saying to them, "Are we crazy?

Do you see these the way we do?"

And we showed them to Roy Lichtenstein, that was a friend of ours, and Barnett Newman, who was a great friend of ours, and everybody had the same reaction: "These are unbelievable.

What are these things?"

"Well, they're American quilts."

"Well..." Their reactions were the same, "How did this happen?"

So that encouraged us to think about doing an exhibition, to what it seemed to us to be a completely unknown aesthetic phenomenon that had originated in America and was indigenous.

So I went to see a dear friend who was a curator at the Guggenheim Museum, and she suggested that we try the Whitney.

>> Bonesteel: With the persuasive effects of some of their more astounding quilts in hand, the curator, Mac Doty, at the Whitney was convinced, and an exhibition was planned for the summer of 1971.

>> We took 100 quilts of the maybe 200 we had by then to Roy Lichtenstein's house in the Hamptons.

And he had a house with a cupola, a widow's walk on the top, and we spread them out on the lawn, and we had neighbor kids helping us, and we picked the show by having them move these around like giant things on a chessboard from the top of the building.

And we picked our 62 quilts.

>> Bonesteel: All that was left was to pick a name for this unusual show, but that, too, proved challenging.

>> They went around and around and around about the title, because they needed a title which would keep it out of the crafts sphere.

There was an American craft museum, and the kiss of death, for them, would have been the idea that this was to be a craft show.

So they really struggled with it, and finally, if you all remember the parlance of the day, I thought, "I've got to break this logjam, so I'm going to come up with a title, and I'm going to say that's the title; that's it."

So I said, "Okay, here's the title; everyone ready?"

I said, "We're going to call it Up Against the Wall: Mother's Cover."

And, at that point, it got everybody loosened up enough to finally come up with what we finally did call it, which was Abstract Design in American Quilts.

I kind of knew that they weren't going to use my suggestion, but it was okay.

I mean, it was a little cumbersome, but it really described what we were trying to do, and it was a dignified title that gave dignity to these objects, so in the end, while I thought it didn't have a lot of life, it was okay.

Without much more ado, it opened at the Whitney.

>> The exciting part was that this is the first time I had seen quilts on the wall in a museum-type venue.

And so--and with the lighting in very subdued-- and it just made some of those fabrics just really pop out and were exciting.

>> I think that first exhibit took the quilts from the beds to the walls, and people suddenly began to realize, "Oh, this is art, and maybe we need to take a different look."

And I think they--I think that was really instrumental in helping people to be aware.

>> There were almost instantaneous rave reviews, in part, because art critics always look for something, like every other critic, look for something new to write about.

And here was the Whitney showing for the first time an indigenous American craft, or art, or what was this?

These were quilts.

These were supposed to be on beds, and here they've put them up on their walls where the show before had been Andy Warhol cow wallpaper, so what's going on here?

So the most influential critics in every art journal-- Hilton Kramer, et cetera--wrote just stunning reviews of this show.

And as a consequence, it was supposed to be up for a month or six weeks or something--I can't remember exactly--but it was extended well into the fall.

>> Bonesteel: While the show sent shockwaves through the modern art world, the impact was more personal for artists Beth and Jeffrey Gutcheon.

>> Well, we went to the Whitney because we were young and brave and living in New York, and that's what you do.

You know, it doesn't cost a lot.

You have a chance to get your art kick for the week.

I mean, it's almost obligatory if you live in New York.

But when we got there, it was kind of like a one-two punch.

First, it was a knockout to see all of those quilts, the one and another.

I mean, it was something to wade into.

But when nobody was looking, Beth scooted around the back of one and kind of lifted it back, and she lit up because she said, "I can do this."

And that's the truth.

She started making quilts with never a lesson.

She was able to pick up from looking at that piece at that moment was the igniter for her.

And that exhibit traveled the whole country under the aegis of the Smithsonian for two years.

And so you have to think that, if it started a fire here, it started a fire in a lot of other places, which were just ready to see that.

>> Bonesteel: As Abstract De sign in American Quilts took its creative fire across America and to many parts of the world, it was embraced by people who had endured the exciting and traumatic events of the '60s and early '70s.

>> The waves of interest in quilting have something to do with the ups and downs of national stress.

And there was a lot of stress in 1970s.

>> I think the early '70s were a particully interesting time for those of us who loved quilts.

The women's movement was very big right then.

Women were getting into business; they were getting into politics.

They were entering fields they'd never entered before.

You had the program--television program Roots that brought everybody to thinking about their ancestors and what were they like and what contributions they made.

The time was right to think about women as artists, and women artists began to become more recognized.

>> We completely rejected everything our parents meant.

And I know what it meant to me was, I rejected the design my mother had in the house.

My mother kept up with trends, and I hated it.

I hated that house, the ranch use that they had worked so hard to buy.

That was reflected in many, many houses across the country, where people turned their back on their parents, looked more maybe to their grandparents or maybe to these unknown, nostalgic, great-grandparents to an early America, to reading Thoreau, to looking at antiques.

>> People were going through their attics and looking for family history and local history.

And quilts came out as part of that and were recognized for the very significant role they played in early America.

And I think there was something very human and basic about that that appealed to everybody, and that certainly was part of the basis for the whole quilt-making revival.

>> It's funny, you know, the mothers don't necessarily teach their daughters to quilt.

It's the grandmothers who interest their granddaughters, and it's a really kind of interesting phenomenon that I've seen through the years, and I think that same thing was happening in the '70s.

>> Things really began to take off when the stress was relieved around 1976 by the end of the Vietnam War, and it became a celebratory matter.

>> You always see a surge of interest in this when something major happens.

We had the bicentennial, and a lot of people decided, "Okay, we have to commemorate this wonderful 200-year anniversary."

And people made quilts.

>> We could have celebrated that anniversary in any way, but we tended to celebrate it as a rejection of contemporary life and a look back to a cleaner, more authentic past.

>> Bonesteel: Quilts were surging into contemporary life.

Instructional books with patterns and innovative ideas took off.

Mainstream women's magazines featured quilts as projects and the Quilter's Newsletter and La dies Circle Patchwork periodicals, edited by Bonnie Leman and Carter Houck, became messengers of news, ideas, and networking that further pushed the quilt revival forward.

Welcome to Lap Quilting.

Artistry at the folk level has been expressed in quilts as vividly as in any other form of American decorative art.

When my program Lap Quilting wi th Georgia Bonesteel aired on public television in 1979, the response was immediate.

The idea is called lap quilting, or quilt as you go.

It's nice because you're working without any hoops or frames, and you're working in individual squares.

The simple and portable techniques I taught seemed to hit a nerve.

The letters poured in.

Every week, my children and I filled orders by the hundreds for my first book filled with traditional patterns.

But what was most surprising were the emotional letters I received.

Women would write and say proudly, "I want to do this.

I need to do this."

>> And in my teaching, I met so many women who, like me, were, you know, college-educated, intelligent, talented women who were absolutely worn out with supporting husbands and families and to make sure they got to pursue all of their interests and often at the sacrifice of their own.

And I think that really made me want to do something about it.

>> I remember, Georgia, in the '70s, when we were teaching, and we would find a woman in our class who said that she didn't have a place to sew, and she'd cooked all these meals for her husband before she could leave to come to this conference, but she was loving what she was doing, t how would she ever justify it to her husband?

And I remember Jean y Laury's Ge tting-It-All-Together At Home book.

We would educate these women on, "Take a spot for yourself.

Make time foyourself, because being creative is the antidote to doing the routine tasks of mothering every day."

>> It wasn't specifically about quilt-making, t it included quilt makers.

And I still get letters from people telling me that it gave them the permission to do things.

And it's really about how to find the time and the space to do your own work and the importance of it.

You know, there's an expression that says, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," which I've always loved because I think that kind of epitomizes that necessity for finding time and space for yourself.

>> Bonesteel: Quilt guilds a clubs formed by the hundreds, followed by large quilt gatherings and conventions.

One of the first was called Continental Quilting Congress, formed by Hazel Carter in 1978.

These brought quilters together from across the country in a modern version of the traditional quilting bee.

>> It was very strange for people to realize that women are going to pack up their suitcase and go down to this hotel and spend the whole weekend quilting.

I mean, that was unheard of.

And some of the ladies even had a fit that I was going to pack my suitcase and stay at the hotel too.

And then, next year, they were going to stay there.

So the conventions just started all around the country at that time too.

>> I think it's like a giant group therapy session, quilting.

And when the women would get together in the quilting bees, that's what it was, you know, it's a group therapy.

And they get their thoughts out.

They get nurturing.

They get advice, and I think that's something that's happened withuilting throughout the years, and it still does.

I mean, look at all our groups we have.

>> I think quilts have been instrumental in raising women's opinion of themselves and of others' opinions of them, and we're starting back with these women entrepreneurs, of which Marie Webster was one >> Bonesteel: More than 60 years earlier, in 1911, Marie Webster almost single-handedly started the first quilt revival of the 20th century when her unique patterns invigorated a nation ready for new ideas in quilts.

>> My grandmother was Marie Webster, and she lived in this house from 1902 until 1942.

She designed 33 patterns, and they were almost all floral appliqué quilts.

Her patterns became well-known because she had some pictures of her quilts published in The Ladies' Home Journal.

This was her very first appliqué quilt here, called A Pink Rose.

And she sent the quilt to The La dies' Home Journal because her friends thought that the other women would like to see pictures of that quilt.

Her patterns were quite unusual, and she didn't really use traditional patterns, but she used some traditional concepts in her quilts.

>> She defined a style that was primarily medallion-based rather than block-based, primarily pastel colors rather than darker or drabber colors.

And she did a lot of appliqué that was very naturalistic, as opposed to the Pennsylvania-German appliqué, which is very stylized and formal.

>> And then in 1911, they published this page, and it was the first time that quilts had been shown in color in a magazine.

And I think that's why it attracted so much attention.

>> And the response the magazine got and the number of letters that came in, they were absolutely overwhelmed, and they had no plans to answer such-- they didn't expect such a response, so they just sent them all to Marion, Indiana, and said, "Here, read.

Here's your fan mail; you need to do something about this."

>> And well over a million women would have seen these color pictures of quilts in 1911, and they created a sensation.

And she was literally deluged with mail from women wanting to sew the same patterns.

>> She was really a major pioneer.

I really give her credit for being the one who did the promoting, did the marketing, and did the selling, and made quilting into a business.

>> Well, she had a group of friends that helped her in her business.

And about 1920, they started calling the business The Practical Patchwork Company, and her friends would help her make kits.

And they would have all the fabric that you would need to make a quilt packaged in a box, and the boxes would sell for about $12.

And all the pieces would be marked in there, and all you had to do was cut out the pieces and sew them together.

>> Bonesteel: Along with her other accomplishments, Marie Webster wrote the very first book about quilts.

Focusing on both history and instruction, Quilts: Their Story and How To Make Them was published in 1915 by Doubleday.

It served as an important starting point for telli the story of quilt-making.

>> Marie Webster was an extraordinary woman.

She was born in 1859, in the same year Darwin published The Origin of Species, in the same year Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities, and to think that Marie Webster was born before the Civil War and in her lifetime witnessed the Civil War, two World Wars, the Depression, and yet she became not only a thoroughly modern woman, but pioneer in the kind of entrepreneurial skills that current women involved in the quilt world are practicing: designing, selling, merchandising.

>> And I think one of the most extraordinary things is that she was 50 years old before she started quilting.

Now, she did other forms of needlework and was very accomplished, but she didn't start quilting and designing her quilts until she was around 50 years old, so that gives a lot of people hope.

>> Bonesteel: As the 1970s quilt revival hit the 1980s, quilting truly became an industry.

Major book publishers, manufacturers of fabric, sewing machines, and other supplies charged into the marketplace.

What were once small gatherings of quilters in Paducah, Kentucky, and Houston, Texas, became major events.

>> The first quilt show, everything was all set up, and it looked lovely.

And this was really the first time that you ever saw something very pretty in the booths.

That was one of the things that was quite amazing.

And all of a sudden, just before the show opened, one of the--we used the pole and draping--the whole pole system in the center fell over, and all the booths were falling down.

And so everybody was rushing around and setting it up and, you know, but it was fine.

Everybody pitched in and helped, and it was a lot of fun.

Not that it isn't fun today, but when you talk about going to a quilt show today, you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of booths, and you're talking about, you know, walking, you know, like, the football stadium rather than a small ballroom in a hotel where we had the first shows.

So it has grown tremendously.

>> Bonesteel: New tools, like the computerized sewing machine, the rotary cutter, and the longarm quilting machine have revolutionized quilting.

>> When we started running Quilt Festival and formed the International Quilt Association, and it had its judged show, machine quilting wasn't even permitted in the show.

If a quilt was machine quilted, that was--it was ineligible.

It was not accepted for the show.

Now machine-quilted quilts win Best of Shows everywhere.

I mean, they're gorgeous quilts.

It has almost become--to the eye, it has almost become the standard.

>> You know, in the '70s, people started just cutting machines apart and trying to get more room in there to do the quilting, so they were stretching out machines and welding them together and doing all this, so of course the idea came to a manufacturer, you know, we should actually make something like this that has a bigger arm.

And by 1980, the first longarm machine was really "born," so to speak.

>> Longarm machines make things faster, for one thing, and now they're making things very beautiful.

And, of course, you can have a lot more quilting on a quilt if you do it th a longarm than if you do it by hand, so I still prefer--if I had my druthers, I'd go with hand-quilting, but I do think the longarm is here to stay.

>> And today, we just have this wonderful tool available to us to help us accomplish this in such a small amount of time.

>> The people who like the creative side of the putting together of the puzzle, if you want to call it that, are happy to keep doing that, and they can send them out.

And I've seen some masterpieces done on the longarm quilting machine.

>> What's happening now is that this inspiration that comes from the individual is transcending the tradition, and I think that's the amazing thing.

As we know from our--the mothers who came before us-- I love that saying, "Anonymous was a woman."

We know that women experimented with what they had.

They experimented with fabrics; they experimented with tools.

We're doing the same thing.

We're experimenting with the latest cutter and the latest sewing machine and the computer-generated this or that because we are like our mothers, and we are experimenting and doing something different, and I think that's the interesting thing about quilt-making, why it will continue is, because, as every woman has an idea, it can be translated into a quilt.

>> Bonesteel: As the Whitney exhibit proved that traditional American quilts could be perceived as art, artists set out to prove that they could work in this medium as well.

Quilters like Michael James, Nancy Crow, Yvonne Porcella, and Jean Ray Laury expanded the boundaries of quilt-making.

As traditional designs collided with modern influences, an entirely new genre of quilt emerged: the art quilt.

>> The influence of modern art is not to be denied.

If you look at the abstract, the quilts that are abstract in nature, people like Michael James and others, you can certainly see the influence of modern art.

That's not a pejorative.

That's not bad.

There's no one, even people seemingly as revolutionary as Barnet Newman, who came out of someone's left ear, they all reflected what has come before, but the influence of that, especially because of mass communications, on the world of the quilt maker is just undeniable.

So the utilitarian side of it has, in a sense, been lost.

Does anyone really have to make quilts anymore to keep their family warm?

Of course not.

It's become a craft art.

Now they very often are extremely personal vehicles to talk about one's inner life, as if they were writing, as if you are writing a novel, scenes of your childhood, your family, your traumas, your disease.

And I'm not--you know, I'm not mocking this.

I'm just saying that that's a use that quilts were never put to in the past, and that-- and of course, aesthetics follows that.

>> Bonesteel: In 1956, Jean Ray Laury was years ahead of the modern revival of the 1970s when she made "Tom's Quilt" setting her on a prolific and distinctive creative path.

Color, humor, and often politics are important elements in her work.

>> Many people think if you say something with humor that it's not serious.

My feeling has always been that, you know, if somebody's teasing you, you want to really listen because that's where the serious stuff is.

And I tend to make these quilts--especially if they're controversial--kind of colorful and, in a way, attractive combinations and even some cartoon-like parts which tend to really draw people in.

So you might get to have people reading these statements who would otherwise reject, you know, even listening.

I'll tell you about a comment I did hear at a quilt show one time that really struck me.

Three women were looking at a quilt and discussing it.

This was not at an avant-garde show at all.

There were relatively traditional quilts, but there were a few that were, you know-- had broken some barriers.

And one of--they were looking, and finally one of the women said, "Well," she said, "These aren't even quilts at all.

These are just art."

And this struck me as so funny, because our main thrust, you know, is often to have the work accepted as art, and here was a woman for whom that was, you know, something that did not belong in quilt-making.

And I've loved that as an illustration of, you know, the opposite way of looking at it.

>> I consider myself a quilter.

If people choose to look at my work and say, "That's art," that's fine.

You know, I think art is in the eye of the beholder.

And I make quilts that I'm inspired to do at the moment, and I've had people say, "Well, those are art."

But, you know, to me, I make a quilt, and I don't really care about labels and what one person says is art and craft or whatever.

>> There is this camaraderie of spirit of everyone who uses fabrics and calls quilt their medium.

But there is sort of a paration between the two, of the art quilt because a lot of people who want to make that first quilt, they, at that point, cannot identify with those of us who make our hearts as our quilts, our personality as our quilts.

But eventually, they follow that path because they've made quilts for all their children, they've made quilts for all the bed and all the grandchildren, and et cetera, and they want to do something different, and I think that's the amazing part about the quilt revival is because it's ongoing.

We are always regenerating and renewing and starting afresh.

>> Bonesteel: The quilt revival also encouraged the academic study and conservation of quilts.

Quilt guilds and preservation groups in many states conducted extensive quilt studies: collecting, dating, and recording the designs and histories of countless quilts.

With thousands of quilt patterns and the infinite variations possible, Barbara Brackman realized there was a need for a system to catalog patterns by name and design.

What she developed is now commonly known as the Brackman Numbers.

It has become a key toolo many researchers and quilt makers, but also speaks to the need to give a name to an individual's creation.

>> Why do people need to have that name?

>> As I said in the introduction to my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, I believe, in the Bible, it says God gave Adam the task of naming the animals.

And I think he gave Eve the task of naming the quilts.

People really feel a need to have a name for quilts.

Now, I think that grows out of the whole culture of a quilt.

A quilt is not only visually beautiful.

Often, it has a very poetic name: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, Drunkard's Path, and so if your quilt does not have a name, then it's missing half the story.

>> As quilt research has delved into areas of little study, fascinating discoveries have come to light, including a deeper appreciation of the variety of quilts made by different ethnic groups both in the past and present.

In the early 1970s, the quilts of the Amish challenged the senses of quilters and collectors.

>> Amish quilts had really not surfaced--they were not a known quantity at all.

The first one we ever saw was on this bed, and we had never seen a quilt like it, and I said to Gail, "Gail, this was made by a deranged angel.

It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

It's still one of the most wonderful Amish quilts we ever bought.

It was in the Whitney show.

It was in I don't know how many hundreds of shows after that.

We knew--at least I knew--it couldn't be the work of an individual genius late at night, because it was too finished.

The forms were too perfect.

The stitching was clearly extraordinarily well-practiced.

The quilting was amazing.

Anthe form was so powerful, I knew it had to have come out of some kind of a development.

It didn't just arrive in someone's mind overnight.

It isn't the way things work normally.

But the real impact was emotional.

No other quilt makers used the kind of colors Amish did, these intense passionate colors, which we don't associate with them.

We think of them as dressing in black.

Well, they don't at all.

When you see them, those are travel clothes.

When you see them in their normal clothes, the kids on their way to school, they look like a flock of exotic birds.

They love color.

So we took it around and showed it to people, and no one could tell us what it was.

And finally, one person said, "Oh, right, that's an Amish quilt."

>> Bonesteel: The quilt revival has also contributed to increasing the awareness of African Americans' cultural connection to quilts.

From traditional styles to ethnically unique patterns, the range of African-American quilting is vast.

The quilts originating from a small town in Alabama known as Gee's Bend have been widely recognized as a unique form of quilt designithin that particular African-American quilting community.

The Gee's Bend quilts are specific to a relatively isolated area.

Originally made for utilitarian use, they are now being celebrated for their unusual and unique designs.

In 2002, the Gee's Bend quilts graced the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

They have continued to other major galleries, garnering critical reviews similar to the ones Abstract Designs In American Quilts saw in 1971.

But with this popularity brings concerns that the public could perceive these quilts as the only style of quilting that African Americans have created.

>> That does not negate what was gone before; you build on top of it.

>> Bonesteel: Cuesta Benberry is one quilt historian who has spent much of her life studying African-American quilts.

Like many Midwesterners, Cuesta's family quilt heritage was more traditional, and she's long been at odds with the narrow definition that some scholars have placed on African-American quilts.

>> Now, these are the people who said that these Southern, rural, spontaneously made, improvisationally made Afcan-American quilts were the true African-American quilt and the only authentic one.

Then I began to say, "Well, now, wait a minute."

And whereas there was no denying that the quilts that the scholars were studying were African-American, but they certainly did not represent the totality of African-American qlt-making.

But the point is, once you identify that as the African-American quilt, then that excludes all those other quilts that black people make.

>> Bonesteel: As quilts became more fashionable and profitable, their mass reproduction turned quilters into activists.

In 1992, the esteemed Smithsonian Institution agreed to have a number of classic American quilts in their collection reproduced in China and sold in the United States and abroad.

>> Utterly horrified, just horrified.

I thought, "They are cheapening the whole concept of the American quilt.

What are they doing?"

>> But if they had not duplicated the one quilt, I think that they might have--it might not have been so bad.

But this one quilt everyone held sacred, and they never copied it.

No one had ever reproduced or touched those designs.

>> Bonesteel: The one quilt was a quilt depicting biblical scenes made by African-American quilter Harriet Powers in 1886.

Among other tactics, quilters picketed in front ofhe Smithsonian Institution.

>> I got a call from them.

They said, "We were just so appalled.

We've never been picketed before, and it was by these quilters.

We just can't understand it."

>> And so we decided that this was not going happen.

The Smithsonian is 85% tax-supported.

The quilting industry is a tax-paying industry.

The quilters pay their taxes.

Those quilt shops were paying their taxes.

And we just didn't think it was right.

So we started a petition drive that turned into a nationwide petition drive, and my cousin Nancy and I took 20,000 signatures to Congress and testified in Congress against what the Smithsonian was doing, and we did finally get people to understand.

>> And those quilts were eventually pulled from the market.

You can hardly find them today.

>> Bonesteel: One of the most contentious topics in modern quilting is the fascinating idea that quilts could have served as signs or instructions to slaves as they sought passage to free states along the Underground Railroad.

In 1999, the myth was further enhanced by the publication of the book Hidden in Plain View.

However, after extensive study, most researchers consider the idea more myth than fact.

>> About 20 years ago, people in my classes started coming up to me and saying, "Is it true that log cabin quilts were hung on the clotheslines of houses that were safe houses where a slave could find protection if she or he escaped?"

I said, "Well, I haven't heard that.

I'll think about it."

But then people just kept coming more and more.

And then we started seeing it in print.

And I think the earliest I've seen it in print's about 1980.

So I analyzed it, because it's myth--you know, it's a story that I wanted to find out more about, and one thing I did was, I spent a lot of time looking at log cabin quilts, trying to analyze log cabin quilts.

If they were made before 1861-- the Underground Railroad was most active in the '40s and '50s, the 1840s and '50s--so that's when these quilts would have to have been put t the laundry line.

I can't find log cabin quilts from that era.

They just don't seem to exist.

The earliest one with a date on it is 1869 that I've seen.

There are earlier ones, non-dated, but they don't go back to the '40s and '50s.

>> There was a language for Gypsies and hobos that they would put on trees outside certain towns that would tell other Gypsies or hobos what to expect.

And then on certain houses that were generous or could be looked on for help, they would mark them in a certain way.

So, yes, this kind of thing can happen.

But could it happen with quilts?

I never believed it.

And I don't believe it now.

I think that the Underground Railway was an extraordinary, desperate thing.

It was fraught with danger for both blacks and whites.

It was a perilous journey.

People died.

I don't think--and to kind of give it this romantic overcoat, overtone of somehow quilts being used, it's not possible.

>> In the human spirit, there is a need for mythology.

And I personally believe that it is out of that need for mythology and meaning given-- giving to our lives that this Underground Railroad story has been--has perpetuated itself, as it were.

I think it comes out of the human spirit and its need for meaning and explanation of things that are very--they're very difficult.

They don't have easy explanations.

>> I think that the story is so fabulous on its own, it doesn't need any embellishment; we don't have to make it romantic.

It's good enough as it stands.

>> Bonesteel: In 1987, the largest quilt ever created, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, was spread across the national lawn in Washington, D.C., for the first time.

The making of a quilt has long been a method for raising awareness and expressing support.

Perhaps unlike any other object, quilts serve as comforters to people in times of pain and loss.

Quilts were first made for soldiers or their families in the American Civil War, and the tradition continues to this day with groups across the country making quilts for comforting wounded soldiers and honoring the lives lost in recent conflicts.

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 4,000 quilts have been made and delivered.

September 11, 2001, impacted the world in many ways, and Jinny Beyer was one of the many quilters moved to express her grief in her work.

>> My husband, John, and I were planning a vacation.

We hadn't been on one for about four years, and I finally got him settled to go, and we were planning two weeks in Italy.

And I was really looking forward to this.

I do an annual seminar every year at Hilton Head in South Carolina, and we have a different theme each year.

And our theme--coming-up theme-- was "Quilt Design From Floor," inspiration from floors.

So I was really looking forward to going to Italy.

I had two cameras.

I had lots of film, extra digital cartridges, because I wanted to look at every floor and get slides and be inspired to make a quilt from some floor design I saw.

So we were packing up, ready to go.

It was a beautiful day, and I got a phone call from a good friend of mine.

She said, "Turn on your television."

So this day we were leaving was on September 11th.

We were supposed to leave at 5:00 that afternoon, and obviously we didn't go.

We got word, you know, at midday that a very good friend of ours had been on the plane that went into the Pentagon.

You know, everybody experienced, you know, thoughts, and everyone had-- I just was faced that whole time with these images of, you know, the smoke and the ash, and then you'd see this flag that suddenly appeared out of a building or over the Pentagon or, you know, in the middle of the World Trade Center area.

You know, there'd be these flags.

And these colors were just bringing these images to me of smoke and ash and the red, white, and blue, but kind of subdued, but now and then really strong, and it's just sort of filling my head.

And I kept thinking about that quilt because I was really anxious to start a quilt, or I had been anxious to start a quilt.

So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to make my quilt."

But now the quilt, of course, was wrapped up into all the events of September 11th, and I had a poster, actually, of the floor of St. Mark's Cathedral in Italy.

And I just sat there for four days, cutting and sorting and listening to the drone of the fighter planes overhead, which was just a never-ending thing, constant.

And that's sort of how my quilt came about.

I vowed, as I was sitting there cutting and sewing, I'd never-- I had no idea what was going to happen beyond that center.

I was just going to let it grow and see what happened.

I called it Windows because I figured everybody was looking out of windows that day or staring at windows or their TV or windows from planes and buildings and so forth, and I just thought that was an appropriate name.

And I have--a larger part of the design also sort of represents the Statue of Liberty, because I know all those people in the tower just could look right down and see the statue there in the harbor, and so it was quite an accomplishment.

In the end, it's close to 5,000 pieces, so I did have more than each of the victims that they finally determined.

But the one in the very center is for my friend.

>> This created such enormous sorrow.

It was palpable.

You could simply feel it.

You could touch it everywhere you went.

It was like that.

We decided that this was an event that had to be acknowledged.

Many shows were having to be cancelled at that time because people were afraid to fly or they couldn't fly, or they simply were not going to leave home for any reason.

I'm happy to say that six weeks after September 11th, we held our annual quilt festival in Houston, and we had not a single cancellation among all those quilters.

They came, no matter what.

And they came to the show, no matter what.

But what was really very touching was the fact that the quilters were making quilts.

That was what they turned to as a catharsis for their grief and their sorrow.

They worked through it by making quilts.

And I decided that, if they were going to make quiltswe would show those quilts.

So I put out the word on the internet, and I said, "You make 'em; we'll hang 'em.

We will find a way."

And remember, my show was completely planned at that point.

We're six weeks out of the show.

We thought maybe we'd get about 50 quilts, and we got over 300 that were sent in.

And we hung them right down the middle of the show in a wall, like a wall with messages to America.

And they were absolutely incredible, incredible quilts.

They spoke of patriotism; they spoke of sorrow; they spoke of anger; they spoke of everything you can imagine.

>> Thank you, one and all, for coming here today to help The Quilter's Hall of Fame and the Webster family commemorate and celebrate this historic event.

It's been 25 years since the Hall of Fame was founded.

It's been 12 years since Rosalind Webster Perry donated the house to the Hall of Fame as our headquarters.

We've long anticipated this day, so let's give a rousincheer that the day has arrived.

>> Bonesteel: In July 2004, in Marion, Indiana, the Quilter's Hall of Fame celebrated the grand opening of its permanent headquarters: the former home of Marie Webster.

>> What do they say?

Rev your engines.

How about rev your scissors, ladies--one, two, three, cut!

>> This has been an amazing experience for me.

I had no idea that so many people would become involved and that so much enthusiasm would be generated by this whole project.

It's just been fantastic.

>> I think having this physical house open where people can come and see it and see her history, that it will engage them more in quilt history.

>> Well, I think this is just the beginning of a wonderful museum, a wonderful experience for people who come to Marion to visit the house.

I think they will get a lot of inspiration when they come here.

>> Bonesteel: It has been a wonderful journey for me personally and for the millions, maybe billions of people whose lives have been touched by the quilt.

While quilt-making has become more popular and has evolved in many ways, I think that the essential spirit of quilting is virtually unchanged, and that is the desire to make something.

>> I increasingly think that the need to somehow bundle together and do something that has kind of a meaning, a personal meaning, something that you can share with your friends, it reaffirms lots and lots of values.

>> I consider jazz a unique American art form, and I see the American quilt as having evolved into that.

We took it, and we reinvented it, as it were; it evolved.

We laid our own hand on it and created our own sense of it, and that's exactly what I mean by the "jazz."

You take a theme, and you improvise on it, and eventually, you either add your own cultural thing to it, or, when you get brave enough, you start getting really outside the box and adding your own personal theme to it.

>> It has this soft side to it.

And in this--today, when there's so much technology around them, and people are busy and rushing, and the idea of sitting down and quilting or sitting at your sewing machine and seeing something re-created in front of you with that fabric is, I think, why people are so drawn to it.

>> The whole idea of making something to be used for somebody you love, or making it because it's something you feel strongly about, I think those are key elements.

>> You can do it at home.

You don't need an art degree.

You don't need to have a lot of messy equipment because you know how to make your curtains, you can pretty well figure out how to make a quilt.

But for the rest of the population, it's the historical connection.

>> Quilts, I think, to me, help define women's lives.

They're one of the few things that people save.

They have thrown away their grandmother's clothing.

They've thrown away her letters.

They've thrown away her furniture, but they save her quilts.

And so it's some kind of a tangible link to the past.

>> There are, truthfully, messages that are stitched into those quilts.

And sometimes they are messages of joy, and sometimes they're messages of sorrow.

And sometimes they're messages of hope, and sometimes they're messages of desperation.

But I think there's one message that's always stitched in, and it is, "Don't forget me.

I was here.

Remember me.

Remember me."

>> ♪ Could you you imagine ♪ ♪ a more clever object?

♪ ♪ Warms a body, ♪ ♪ ignites the mind.

♪ ♪ Brings two people together ♪ ♪ for the essentials ♪ ♪ of nature.

♪ ♪ Puts them to bed ♪ ♪ one day at at time.

♪ ♪ The art of the heart ♪ ♪ and design of the mind.

♪ ♪ Warms a body, ♪ ♪ ignites the mind.

♪ ♪ The art of the heart ♪ ♪ and design of the mind.

♪ ♪ Puts you to bed ♪ ♪ one day at a time.

♪ ♪ The art of the heart ♪ ♪ and design of the mind.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> announcer: Major funding for The Great American Quilt Revival has been provided by The Warm Company, maker of Warm & Natural batting and other products that inspire creativity in your quilting, crafting, sewing, and home decorating projects.

Additional funding has been provided by the American Quilter's Society, a dynamic quilting organization with members from around the world.

Bernina of America, maker of fine sewing machines.

Only Bernina has given you Swiss precision stitching for four generations.

Quilting Treasures by Cranston, high-quality, premiufabrics designed for the dedicated quilter.

And Gammill Quilting Systems, an industry leader in longarm quilting machines.

- [Narrator] Quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.