Patchwork Quilt / "Beloved"

Item

Title
Patchwork Quilt / "Beloved"
Creator
Rogers, Nicole
Date Created
2024
Contributor
Morrison, Toni
Description
This project was inspired by a family quilt that appears as a motif in the novel. The quilt represents connection, comfort, and continuity—things that bind individuals, families, and communities together. I chose to repurpose a range of old textiles, using remnants of the past, each with their own story, to create something new—a mosaic of sorts. In Beloved, each of the characters’ individual stories, no matter how short or fragmented, and points of view come together to tell one larger story, and that layering is mirrored on my quilt. The layers points of connection within those stories are the layers of batting and backing placed underneath the quilt top. Though the connected patchwork appears to be seamless, underneath it all, there are frayed seams barely clinging together, connected and strengthened by those connections. This effect reflects how the characters’ trauma and memories, though fragmented, are woven into something enduring and meaningful.

NICOLE ROGERS ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US:

There is a colourful patchwork quilt in Toni Morrison’s Beloved that moves through the novel as a motif, representing comfort, connection, and continuity. This motif connects to Beloved’s central themes, which are rooted in the trauma of slavery, personal and collective healing, memory, and community. Published in 1987, Beloved was very well received and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. Inspired by the real story of Margaret Garner, the novel gives a voice to African-Americans silenced by history. Morrison draws attention to the smaller, everyday details and experiences of mid-19th-century African-American people, ultimately humanizing them and detailing the quiet acts of survival rather than focusing on statistics and monumental events. Sethe’s family’s patchwork quilt is an example of this and is the inspiration for my final project: my own patchwork quilt. I wanted to explore the impact of quilts and quilting and to create a mosaic representing remnants of the past coming together to create something new.

Going into my final project, I was hesitant. I was worried that because quilting has such a long history in African-American communities, I might be overstepping as a white woman. What I discovered was that quilting is an activity that, through its long history, actually unites people from many different backgrounds. I started my research by combing through a master list of quilting resources published by art historian Dr. Jess Bailey. There were books and articles detailing quilting traditions all over the world, from Wales to pre-colonial America to South Africa and Japan. Quilting among African Americans began as labour imposed in service to white households, but, over time, it was reclaimed as a powerful form of expression, storytelling, and resilience within African-American communities. Quilting can be traced all the way back to ancient civilizations. What I found was that in each tradition, quilting is an act of care. It represents our human instinct to create something that nurtures and sustains, both physically and emotionally. Quilters can tend to their spirit while creating something that will keep their family warm for years to come. A quilt’s utilitarian purpose, along with the lack of formal training involved, is what makes quilting a folk art (MacDowell). Author and quilter Beth Gutcheon is widely quoted in the quilting community for saying that “[a] woman made utility quilts as fast as she could so her family wouldn’t freeze, and she made them as beautiful as she could so her heart wouldn’t break” (1). Quilts and skills in quilt-making are often handed down from one generation to the next, meaning that in centuries past, women could be recognized and remembered for their art long after they were gone—even though their roles were often confined to the domestic sphere. Quilting is ultimately an important piece of women’s history and continues to be an important source of community among women today. In Beloved, the patchwork quilt is a representation of creativity and expression while also being an everyday object that is passed between family members, mended, and wrapped around bodies when they are cold or sick.

My quilting project was my own space for creative expression. It was also a space for mistakes to be made. I started by pulling out every bit of scrap fabric that I had left over from past sewing projects. I laid out my batting as a size guide to place my pieces on top of and just started taking pieces that were already cut into small rectangles and placing them randomly—a sort of intentional disorder. I then cut some of the favourites that I had left to fill in the gaps. I wanted my quilt to be scrappy and follow no clear pattern. I wanted to make use of what I already had. What I discovered was that finding a way to sew so many strangely sized and arranged pieces was not easy. Some of my corners came out wonky, and I spent a lot of time with my seam ripper. This process took a lot of patience and care. I wanted to make something that I could be proud of and that would stand the test of time. Though in the end, my quilt top was not perfectly straight, I loved it for its imperfection. I thought about my grandma who quilted until the day she died and all of the makers who came before me, makers like Sethe and Baby Suggs, who were using scrap fabric from textiles past and making do. I increasingly had a clear image in my mind of the patchwork quilt in Beloved. I thought about who might use my quilt throughout its life and whether I would need to restitch it in spots that wore down. I reflected on the significance of the quilt for the characters in Beloved as a family tradition is passed on along with a quilt. Pieces of the family are all a part of the quilt, and this family presence would be why Beloved becomes so attached to the quilt later in the novel. I then made the last-minute decision to hand quilt all of my layers together. Once they were basted and chalk lines were drawn, I got to sit down and enjoy the simple and repetitive process of hand quilting. I could let my mind rest and surrender myself to the quilting process. Eventually, my fingers and back grew sore. I adjusted my posture and considered the extent of the physical labour involved before sewing machines were available and affordable. I pictured the hands of makers in generations before me, telling a story through their quilting. I wondered when someone finally invented the thimble.

The way that I sewed pieces and layers together to make my quilt also speaks to the lives and stories that come together in Beloved. Each of my fabric pieces has a story from my past or my loved ones’ pasts. Last Christmas, I made my sister a set of cloth napkins out of brown linen. A few years ago, my brother gave me his old duvet cover (white with vines and red flowers) because it was worn and ready to be replaced. I salvaged the strongest parts of the fabric and tucked them away to make something else of them later. A few pieces were left over from a past quilt that I made for a friend’s baby. Using those remnants of baby muslin and cotton patterned with woodland creatures felt like the perfect way to honour the baby daughter who dies in Beloved while reflecting on themes of innocence, memory, and loss that run through the novel. The memories of the baby are woven into the story through Beloved and the haunting of 124, so I stitched a bit of that into my quilt. The small square of silk that I included represents the luxury of the velvet that Amy Denver speaks about. I had never thought much of her character before, but carefully sewing that silk in, knowing how difficult it was for me to find when I had originally bought it, made me think about how Amy’s seeking out velvet was really her way of seeking out freedom and life beyond survival. In that sense, my silk also represents Sethe and Denver’s searching for the same thing as they work through trauma. I included red fabric for no reason in particular, but, once it was in, I thought about the red cover on the newer editions of Beloved. The colour choice was not something that I had considered before, but I wondered if it was meant to represent the violence and the passion of characters’ stories. Each of their individual stories, no matter how short or fragmented, and their points of view coming together to tell one larger story are mirrored on my quilt. The layers’ points of connection within those stories are the layers of batting and backing placed underneath the quilt top. Though the surface of the quilt appears to be seamless, underneath it all, there are frayed seams barely clinging together, connected and strengthened by those connections.

There was a lot that I wanted to say with this quilt project. There is also a lot that I learned about the way that Beloved works and the depth of its characters. Making, be it a quilt or a story, is an act of preservation but also an act of honouring the past by creating something meaningful in the present.
References
Bailey, Jess. “A Quilt Bibliography.” Public Library Quilts,
https://www.publiclibraryquilts.com/quilt-library. Accessed 12 November 2024.

Gutcheon, Beth. “Design: American Patchwork—Sewing the Blues.” The New York Times, 20 July 1975, www.nytimes.com/1975/07/20/archives/design-american-patchwork-sewing-the-blues.html.

MacDowell, Betty, et al. Artists in Aprons: Folk Art by American Women. Dutton, 1979.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Alfred A. Knoff, Inc., 1987.

Reinhardt, Mark. Who Speaks for Margaret Garner?, University of Minnesota Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=648104.
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