The Quilters: Women

I have read many books about pioneering women who set up homes from scratch and quilted for practical and soul-fulfilling reasons. Usually though, those women are long gone and we are left with rather dry details of their lives. The joy of this book is that the women whose words are recorded in it are living, breathing members of that pioneer group, and, even though their experiences were in the 20th rather than the 19th century,the issues and incidents are the same and they tell a vibrant story.The book records conversations amongst Texas quilting groups, to which the authors were invited and the ladies seem eager to tell stories of their early days in dug outs and cabins, their families scaping a life from the soil and their role in that. None of them ever sound hard done by or as if they wish their lives had been different. And they are all keen to express the creative and fulfilling role that quilting has had in their lives.If you are not a quilter, you will still enjoy the strength, friendship and nobility that run through these conversations - they are a link with a passed era, which I felt honoured to share as I read.

I have always been interested in women's history as told through useable arts such as quilts. This book is a masterpiece at combining oral history with wonderful personal stories and beautiful photographs. It's a must for anyone interested in women's history, historical anthrpology, women's studies, or US history.

The words of the quilters, their faces, the photograps of the places and of the quilts that figured so strongly in their lives--these give us a profound human experience. I have seen, and very much enjoyed, the play that was adapted from this book. The book itself is more intimate and more powerful. You get to know these women, and you're glad to have had the chance.

Strength and courage comes tumbling out of the words of these women of the Southwest, just as the colors came tumbling out of their scrap bags. From these they created spectacular quilts to counter life in homes dug into the earth, dust storms, and the incessant sound of wind. Busy fingers gave solace as they faced the loneliness of a land "stretched flat to the edge of the sky". I found these accounts to be profoundly moving. This is not a "how to quilt" book, but a compassionate account of the texture and fiber of the lives of pioneer women. It's impact continued when a play, "The Quilters", based on the book, became an internationally successful Tony nominated Broadway play.

The Quilters is an absolute gem of a book! It's a thoughtful tribute to extraordinary women who invented an art form out of scraps of cloth to record and celebrate the domestic events of families and communities living in places and times that were uniquely un-domesticated. Walter Prescot Webb, the great historian of the Great Plains, suggested the West was domesticated by the six-shooter, barbed-wire, and the spirit of remarkable men. He should have also noted the dogged spirit of the women who were The Quilters!