A lifetime of creativity and love.

A Lifelong Love

I had the privilege to talk to Alice Yale, a master of the art form, about her craft.

Visiting Alice is always an absolute pleasure, but this day was particularly special. I found her sitting on the shaded front porch, remarking about the sweet song of a robin she had been listening to all morning. And the porch is where we stayed, in the cool shade with the bright warm spring sun shining behind the young leaves and brilliant tulips, on a day that could have been in this century or last.

“I wanted to quilt ever since my mother bought a quilt at an auction when I was a little girl. She paid $7 for it, an old ‘Grandmother’s Garden’ quilt.”

“When I saw it,” Alice said, “I told my mother: ‘Someday, I’m gonna make quilts Ma!’ And my mother told me: ‘Yeah, I guess you will, but you don’t have time now!’ (She meant I had a lot of farm work to do.) Then, when I got married and had children, my mother said: “Well Alice, I guess you won’t have time to make quilts now either.”

“But I did.”

“The first quilt I made was for my daughter Barbara when she was one year old. It was a “Grandmothers Garden” quilt.” It was the same pattern she had fallen in love with so many years earlier. Her daughter, a grandmother herself now, still keeps it in a cedar chest. Alice’s comment on the quilt? “Of course, I wasn’t as good as I am now!”

Her skills increased as she made quilt after quilt - mostly given to friends and family to mark an occasion: a baby’s birth, a wedding, a son or daughter leaving home. Alice has won impressive awards and sold many quilts over the years, in a business where the fortunate few who discovered her were able to own a masterpiece of her legacy.

Each quilt has its own story, each a unique adventure. What struck me was her obvious delight, even years later, when recalling how a friend or customer would gush at the beauty of what she had made for them. The telltale sign of a proud artist.

There seems to be a serendipity that quilts are likely to create - so many times Alice’s creations would echo the person who was meant to own it. In one pattern, an accidental “K” came up in the design for a person with a last name “Kissenger.”

In another, Alice chose to make a tulip quilt for her grandson and his bride, long before she knew it was the very flower the young woman was to carry on her wedding day.

In her eighties, Alice currently has plans to make three more quilts. For over 50 years, she has expressed herself in an art form that can bring an artist delight for a lifetime.

They Didn’t Have To Be Beautiful

They didn’t have to make them beautiful. That is perhaps the simplest statement that describes the elevation of the genre of Quiltmaking from a task that kept families warm, to an important and enduring art form.

Abstract Art

Quilting is a beautiful example of abstraction from which the finest graphic design and fine art curriculums could learn important lessons. Anonymous geniuses who lived a simple country life in the 1800’s (when most of today’s patterns were created) made abstract patterns in fabric that sprang from real life. The genius lives in the choices they made about what to keep in, what to leave out, what shapes and pattern would represent an object they saw every day, in a new abstract way. “Butter Churn” “Wood Knot” or “Log Cabin” are examples of everyday objects abstracted. In addition, they abstracted invisible concepts, such as the pattern “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” does beautifully.

Classic patterns were handed down, for thousands of other artists to re-interpret with new color schemes, copy precisely with more perfect stitches, to modify and improve on the patterns, or make new patterns for another generation to enjoy.

No two handmade quilts are entirely alike, there are just too many variables, and too much of the artist in each creation. That is why, Alice pointed out, they are considered an investment, because their worth increases over time.

Defined by Media

I did some research and writing in Italy on just how much the media that the Masters used influenced the very Masterpieces they created. It relates to all forms of art - even, and especially, quilting! From a child’s drawing to the most realistic sculpture ever made - all art is an abstraction of reality, and the degree and manner of abstraction must be largely defined by the material used to create the piece.

Georgia O’Keeffe said that all she could do is try to convey the impression the beauty made on her, as she could never reproduce the beauty itself. She was successful enough to became one of the greatest artists of all time.

The very media of quilting dictates the intense degree and style of the abstraction that makes it so unique. There are no ‘pictures’ of little log cabins in the “Log Cabin” pattern - that would be rather boring now wouldn’t it?

With its limits and gifts, media defines so much about what art is. A painting can never be truly 3D, a sculpture can never be viewed exactly from the point of view the artist demands, oils can never be watercolors, watercolors never ink drawings.

Think of Michelangelo ’s Sistine Ceiling. The reason most remember the panel: “The Creation of Adam” and not the first three panels, is because Michelangelo himself learned from the media - in this case not so much fresco itself, but just the placement of the existing artwork - on a ceiling over 60 feet above the viewer!

After completing the first three panels, Michelangelo took his scaffolding down and had a look at the work.

What he saw must have disappointed him. Although they are beautiful paintings, they are just too complicated to be appreciated from that distance. So, in the subsequent panels, Michelangelo changed his approach entirely, with bold compositions containing just a few figures and broad shapes made by cloth and clouds. These simple, exciting compositions became some of the most famous works of art in history.

All art is defined by its media, and quilting is no different. You can only go so small with your patches of fabric - you can only get so complicated with the edges.

And, just like the Sistine Ceiling, therein lies the genius. Shapes become bold, and abstract, easily read from far away, patterns are repeated again and again so even if it is folded, or covered by another blanket, or crumpled a bit - the bold beauty still shines through.

The beauty of this media doesn’t end there. Sweetly patterned fabrics, soft to the touch, colors cheerful enough to brighten any heart - useful for keeping warm, comfortable, cool on a warm day.

As Alice proved so many times, a quilt can become a tangible expression of love - given by a Mother to her children and grandchildren when they leave, always ready to give them a hug, always ready to embrace them in the tough times, they can wrap up in it for comfort, hold it tight, hug it back, even cry into it to feel better.

Tangible love. It makes a strong argument for awarding quilting the distinction of being the purest form of art.