hhq patches & pieces RSS

As care work, quilts hold valuable reflections and lessons on love, patience, community, gathering, resource sharing, survival, pleasure, craft, and more. As folk art, quilting represents the power of art to proliferate with massive range, purpose, style, and craft -- despite being overlooked, undervalued, and under-supported by the "high art" movements and institutions of the same time. It's okay to preserve some art, and it's also okay to have art that is well loved, touched, used, felt, held, shared. The fact that many hands and histories have touched quilted items does not make them less valuable to me, but more. Perhaps quilt garments are creating new quilt histories.

Feed sacks were cotton bags used to hold animal feed, flour, sugar, rice, tobacco, beans, cornmeal, bath salts, dog food, sausages, soap and so much more. These bags came "free" with the purchase of home and farm essentials -- at a time when fabrics were a costly and important material. The sacks were often bleached and repurposed -- cut up and sewn into dresses, children's clothing, aprons, dolls, pin cushions -- you name it, and it was probably made with a feed sack by someone.