There are things you can’t do when you are dealing with a bout of vertigo, and then there are things you can do when any movement of your head sends the world spinning (or rather you spinning whilst the world stands still)…
It turns out that when I can’t move, but want to research the history of quilt-making, I turn to YouTube.
Unfortunately for reasons I will explain below, one of the documentaries I watched was, “Quilt Fever,” a 2020 SXSW Documentary Short directed by Olivia Loomis Merrion.
Quilt Fever is, essentially, a mildly engaging short travelogue about a world-famous quilting competition in Paducah, Kentucky that has long been regarded as the “The Academy Awards of quilting” to the quilting enthusiasts of the world.
(My YouTube disclaimer workaround: if you click on the image, it will bring you to the movie)
This SXSW write-up about the short states that quilting is an, “underappreciated artform that requires creativity, skill, and dedication, yet is marked by a lack of pretension.”
Whilst I do agree with the first part about quilting being an underappreciated artform, etcetera, I do find that I disagree with the last bit about the lack of pretension. One of the things that always kept me from being able to get into sewing or handicrafts in general, was the amount of pretentiousness the women (because in rural America, you will be hard-pressed to find a man who sews) in my life who did things like quilting had for those who did not.
As such, quilting has long been something that I poo-pooed for the very reason that I found the people who did it not only filled with an overblown opinion of their hobbies, but severely lacking in taste as well. My childhood notions of quilting were cranky old women who hated children sewing blankets in shades of forest green and *shudder* peach (easily the WORST of the pastels, IMHO).
So, to think now that I am actually embarking upon at least a year of hardcore research into a medium for which I hold such an ingrained scorn is, to say the least, very surprising, but also strangely exciting (?).
This foray into quilting is going to push my preconceived notions I have for a ‘craft’ that I have long considered uncreative and twee at best.
It should be interesting…
