Quilting for Peace is, in my estimation, the best kind of craft book. It contains 15 simple, flexible patterns to get you piecing together a quilt of your own. But as creative people know, the magic of crafting doesn’t come from the simple how-to instructions but the stories surrounding the process. In the case of Quilting for Peace, these are stories told by quilters different in every way but united in “a firm belief in justice and people’s responsibility for each other; and a faith in patchwork’s ability to absorb the maker’s care, respect, and on occasion outrage, and to let whoever touches the quilt feel those as well.” To enter a giveaway for the book, click here.
How did you learn to quilt?
About eight years ago, my mom showed me the basics of piecing and tying so that I could make a baby quilt for a friend’s first child. After that I taught myself pretty much everything I needed to know with the help of a Singer machine-quilting paperback from the Eighties. I’m learning how to hand-piece now.
What inspired you to write Quilting for Peace?
A little bit of healthy competition with the knitters. I loved Knitting for Peace and wanted to show that quilters did just as much to make the world a better place. I was also inspired by an exhibit I saw at the New England Quilt Museum about nineteenth-century quilters who used their craft to provoke social change as well as to comfort those in need. They used their quilts, for example, as a way to participate in politics, work for social justice, and raise money for the causes they believed in.
You conducted interviews with dozens of people to write the essays in Quilting for Peace. What was that process like?
The quilters I talked to were so different from each other in many ways—women (and a couple of men) from ages 15 to 80-something, on four continents and in 14 U.S. states; quilters who are liberal and conservative, who live on farms and in suburbs, in city apartments and even on a houseboat, some of whom have been quilting for decades and others who have only recently learned to sew. And yet they share a remarkably similar way of looking at the world: a mix of pragmatism, hope, and determination, an instinct for what’s needed in the face of sorrow or tragedy, the resourcefulness to make things happen with little money and on short notice, a sense of humor, and a knack for rallying others. I admire them all a great deal. I wish quilters were in charge of everything!
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