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'The quilts are beautiful, the faces worn but kind...the insights affecting' - ""New York Times Book Review"". 'The women who speak through the book shared a vision, a strength, and a spirit that few of us will ever know or understand' - ""Christian Science Monitor"". 'You cant always change things. Sometimes you don't have no control over the way things go. Hail ruins the crops, or fire burns you out. And then you're just given so much to work with in a life and you have to do the best you can with what you've got. Thats what piecing is. The materials is passed on to you or is all you can afford to buy...thats just whats given to you. Your fate. But the way you put them together is your business. You can put them in any order you like' - Mary White, from the Introduction. First published in 1977, ""The Quilters"" chronicles the lives and quilts of pioneer women of Texas and New Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Compelling black and white portraits of the women accompany their moving oral histories, while thirty-six color photographs showcase the quilts. This award-winning book was the basis of the Broadway play ""Quilters"", nominated for seven Tony Awards. Patricia Cooper taught at the University of California at Berkeley until her death in 1987. Norma Bradley Allen is a freelance writer who lives in Cedar Hill, Texas.… (more)
User reviews
The authors have woven--or rather, pieced-- together the narratives and have interspersed them with color photos of quilts, and black and white pictures of farmsteads, churches, and the quilters themselves. It is humbling for a novice quilter like me to examine the beautiful color combinations and designs of their quilts. The book contains page after page of stories that bring to life the kindness, ingenuity, toughness, and humor of these women. Rather than try to describe what they say, I offer these two memorable stories from The Quilters:
“Mama was a beautiful quilter. She done the best work in the county. Everybody knew it. She never let nobody else touch her quilts, and sometimes when she was through quiltin’ for the day on a job that she liked a lot herself, she would pin a cloth over the top of the quilt so nobody could look at it till she was done.
I always longed to work with her and I can tell you how plain I recall the day she said, ‘Sarah, you come quilt with me now if you want to.’
I was too short to sit in a chair and reach it, so I got my needle and thread and stood beside her. I put that needle through and pulled it back up again, then down, and my stitches were about three inches long. Papa come in about that time, he stepped back and said, ‘Florence, that child is flat ruinin’ your quilt.’
Mama said, ‘She’s doin’ no kind of a thing. She’s quiltin’ her first quilt.’
He said, ‘Well, you’re jest goin’ to have to rip it all out tonight.’
Mama smiled at me and said, ‘Them stitches is going to be in that quilt when it wears out.’
All the time they was talkin’ my stitches was gettin’ shorter.
That was my first quilt. I have it still to look at sometimes.”
And this:
“ When my mother was them last days in the county hospital, she said she was worried she hadn’t finished June’s quilt. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t fret, Mama, I’ll do it right now.’ And I did. Went right over to her house where she had that frame up in the living room and I worked all night and into the next morning. Finished it by noon. I went right back to the hospital to tell Mama and she said she could rest easy now. That was the last good thing I was able to do for her.”
The Quilters is an older book, and may not be easy to find now. It’s not an oversized, gorgeous, full-color book like The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, but it’s still worth reading. You can practically hear those women’s voices speaking, and that is a treat all by itself. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in quilting, women’s studies, and American oral history.
A classic, not to be missed.