Wisconsin Crazy
This quilt came home with me last week from a crazy thrift store outing in Wisconsin. A girlfriend invited me to go the “The Bins”, an “outlet” thrift store in a Wisconsin town north of us. It is a vast warehouse where everything is sold by the pound. The cross section of people there is astonishing: women with young children; young men of every color trying to score vintage concert tee shirts; teen girls in packs looking for fun outfits; middle aged folks of all walks of life hunting for items to resell for profit. I can’t say I enjoyed the “thrifting” aspect as it was exhausting (and dirty!) digging through mounds of everything imaginable. After three hours of hoisting mounds of clothing my rotator cuff had enough and is still annoyed with me. My favorite part, though, was people watching with scoring a treasure a close second.
This quilt was in my friend’s cart and I was seriously covetous. When she sorted through all her “finds”, she decided the quilt had a hole, and handed it to me. The hole she noted was something I could easily repair, so I happily brought it home. Based on weight it probably cost $6.50. The process I then submitted the darn thing to made me think of the museum exhibits I attended years ago to see the Gees Bend quilts (https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2015/quilts-gees-bend-slideshow).
Those quilts, made by poor black women in rural (and isolated) Gees Bend, Alabama were showcased at national art museums in 2002, garnering the women and their community fame and opportunities. As artwork, I appreciated the talent of the women to create warm bedcoverings while also making art with what they had. As a quilter, the quilts were hard for me to appreciate as my very OCD brain just wanted to wash them, square them up, re bind them and generally change them entirely. Well, my recent quilt find wasn’t going in any museum so I was free to do as I desired!
The quilt I picked up is a crazy quilt, and boy was it dirty. I would guess it hadn’t been washed since it was made in the early 1970s. While the top was sturdy, with nice embroidery done on the patches, the finishing left a lot to be desired. The backing fabric was pulled to the front and tacked down, making the edges bunchy as well as wonky. After disassembling, I threw the backing fabric into the wash, washing it multiple times to stop the fabric from bleeding color. The front, being more fragile, went into the bathtub. I used shampoo to wash it a few times. One purple velvet fabric continually bled, so I eventually stopped when all I saw was red dye and not filth in the wash water. Drying the thing was an exercise – towels, sheets in the sun, drying rack, ironing.
Then began a complicated process of squaring up both the backing and the top. As the top did not have a square edge to be found, I used my kitchen floor boards as a level guide. After lots of crawling around on the ground, cutting and sewing -voila!- I reassembled the piece. In fact, it is slightly larger now as the originally sewer had turned under about 4” on all sides of the top when finishing it. The last step was mending the few fabrics that had some damage. A red synthetic I was able to patch using cut off pieces of the same fabric. The green wool I backed in felt and darned in place. The out-of-place cotton calico I simply zig zagged frayed edges and left it alone. Now I have the quilt on the guest bed in my sewing room, and I find myself fondling it with a smile every time I walk past.
Hubby is also a fan, and neither of us can understand why our daughter doesn’t want to hang it on her vaulted walls! Sadly, I think this is a case of “parents being so weird”, but honestly this quilt is such a testament to the colors of our childhoods. It also speaks to the hard work of some woman to make a bright bedcover for a loved one during a very chaotic period – Vietnam, social unrest, huge economic changes. I do not know anything about the maker – what color, religion or social slant. I do know, however, that this was a Wisconsin woman who saved, made do, and tried to brighten up her home.
Believe it or not, the majority of these fabrics were from 1960s and early 1970s clothing. Hubby and I have joked that the quilt would survive a nuclear explosion as there is almost nothing natural on its surface. These fabrics were absolutely cutting edge: synthetics, rayon, nylons, and probably a few I can’t even identify. I absolutely can see bell bottom pants. Crop tops. Velvet blazers. Funky mini dresses. This was the vibe of society in the late 1960s, and this quilter has compiled a testament to that generation as told through her family’s clothing.
As a child, my mother often made items of clothing as gifts for us for birthdays and Christmas. Knit sweaters, dresses, jackets and skirts. These were not my favorite gifts to receive when I was little, and my family took up my comment “oh it’s a clo” as an amusing refrain. As an adult Mom would make whatever I requested: wedding dress, maternity business clothing, adorable baby outfits, stunning sweaters. I miss her and would give anything to have a quilt like this one composed of all the fabrics she used over the years to make wonderful clothing. But Mom was not a saver, and all those scraps and outfits are gone, other than a few memorialized in family photos (or saved in my closet). The Wisconsin woman who created this crazy quilt was someone who, like Mom, loved working with fabrics. And making treasures for her family. Sadly, the generation that came later either didn’t appreciate the quilt, or the story of its fabrics and family tale was lost. I for one appreciate it, loving the reminder of the 1970s’ crazy styles, and hope it doesn’t get thrown away again. Because, honestly, what’s not to love about it?!