New Book! The Quilt by Elise Schebler Roberts

Yesterday I received in the mail the newest quilt history book, The Quilt: A History and Celebration of an American Art Form by Elise Schebler Roberts. This hardcopy book measures 12" x 11" and includes 348 pages and oodles of full-color photographs. It's very comprehensive as the listing below shows. Elise asked me to contribute an essay to the book, which I did. It's titled, Black Women Have Always Quilted. The book is a MUST-HAVE for your quilt library.

Part 1: A History and Celebration

1. Old World and Eastern Traditions in quilting prior to 1750


2. Quilting in a New World


3. Commemorative Quilting.... sub-headings include Civil War, the US Sanitary Commission, Alabama Gun Boat Quilts, The Reconciliation Quilt (which includes black figures), Centennial Quilts, Spirit of '76, Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, Celebrating 300 years of Oklahoma History, Remembering Twentieth Century Wars


4. Quilting for Social Change ... sub-headings include Abolition/Antislavery, Temperance, Woman Suffrage adn the Feminist Movement, Civil Rights, Seeking Peace in Our Time (e.g., Boise Peace Quilt Project), Hurrican Katrina Quilts


5. Quilting for Identity ... sub-headings include African American Quilts, the Underground Railroad Quilt Controversy, Amish, American Indian, Immigrants from Southeast Asia (e.g., Hmong), Spiritual Seekers, and Gender


6. Quilting in Communities .. sub-headings include Quilting Circles and Parties (there's a lovely painting by Mary Lyde Hicks Williams, The Quilting Party, which features three older nineteenth century black women quilting at a frame) ..Quilt Guilds, National Groups (e.g., AQS, NQA), The Art Quilting Community, Online Communities (e.g., QHL, QuiltArt).


7. Quilting for Life and Death... sub-heading include Quilting Grief, Passage Quilts, and Quilting to Comfort or Find Cures (AIDS and cancer quilt projects)


8. Quilts as Gifts ... sub-heads include Wedding and Anniversary quilts, Children's quilts.


9. Quilts on Display... sub-headings include World's Fairs (e.g., Columbian Exposition, Century of Progress Fair), The Quilt Show, and the Rise of the Art Quilt (e.g., Whitney Museum, Quilt National)


10. Quilting as Business.. sub-headings include Pioneers in the Business of Quilting (e.g., Marie Webster, former slave Elizabeth Keckley), Quilting Cooperatives, Machine Quilting, Quilt Shops, and Quilt Shows.


11. Sharing the Knowledge .... Quilting Patterns in Newspapers and Magazines, Television Quilting, Quilters on Retreat (e.g., The Quilter's Workshop, FabriCamp ... alas there's no mentioned of the African American annual quilting retreat - Storytellers in Cloth Retreats hosted by Gloria Douglas and Michelle Lewis since about 1995), Back to School Classes for Quilters, and Raising the Next Generation of Quilters.

Part 2: An Encyclopedia of Classic Quilt Styles. The styles featured: applique, art quilts, crazy quilts, embroidered quilts, kit quilts, friendship and memory quilts, patchwork quilts, scrap quilts, whole cloth and trapunto quilts.

Part 3: Saving and Studying Our Quilts. The sections here are: Collecting quilts (e.g., private collectors, corporate collections, online collections), Taking care of quilts, studying quilts, and preserving and exhibiting quilts (e.g., descriptions of current quilt museums).

Throughout are essays from various quilters and quilt historians:

1. Quilts of the Pioneers by Sandra Dallas
2. The 1970s Redefined Quiltmaking as We Knew It by Jean Ray Laury
3. Black Women Have Always Quilted by Kyra Hicks (yes, that's me!)
4. History of Hawaiian Quilting by Cissy Serrao
5. Bird's-Eye View: A Look at the Founding of the Minnesota Quilt Guild
6. Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative by Ami Simms
7. Art Quilts in Perspective by Hilary Morrow Fletcher
8. Sharing Quilting via Television by Alex Anderson
9. Traditions and Superstitions in Hawaiian Quilting by Cissy Serrao
10. Collecting Depression - Era Scrap Quilts by Patricia Cox

I look forward to reading this book in depth this weekend! Enjoy!