Quilting Lessons: Notes from the Scrap Bag of a Writer and Quilter - Hardcover

Berlo, Janet Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803213182 ISBN 13: 9780803213180

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2001

Synopsis

In the middle of a successful academic career, art historian Janet Catherine Berlo found herself literally at a loss for words. A severe case of writer’s block forced her to abandon a book manuscript midstream; she found herself quilting instead. Scorning the logic, planning, and order of scholarship and writing, she immersed herself in freewheeling patterns and vivid colors. For eighteen months she spent all day, every day, quilting. This book penetrates to the very heart of women’s lives, focusing on their relationships to family and friends, to work, to daily tasks. It is a search for meaning at midlife, a search for an integration of career and creativity.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Catherine Berlo, a professor of art history at the University of Rochester who specializes in Native American art, is also a creative writer and quilter. Her many books include Wild By Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts, Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World, and Native North American Art (with coauthor Ruth Phillips).

Reviews

This intriguing and unusual memoir deals with an 18-month period in the mid-1990s when Berlo, a professor of art history and of gender and women's studies at the University of Rochester, was afflicted by writer's block. A successful academic author (The Early Years of Native American Art History), Berlo abandoned a book she had nearly completed and began devoting a major portion of her time to quilt making. This art, practiced most often by women and hence, she says, undervalued, appealed to her sense of play, which had been overshadowed by the need for precision in her professional responsibilities. Berlo was drawn to create what she termed "Serendipity Quilts" that relied on intuitive craftsmanship and a thoughtful use of color rather than precise patterns. With her two sisters, both experienced quilters, she undertook an apprenticeship that not only drew the three of them closer but also tapped into childhood memories. Berlo's vivid account of historical quilting as well as descriptions of her own projects are so compelling, readers may be inspired to try quilting themselves. During her period of creative renewal, Berlo's father passed away, and she made mourning quilts to cope with and memorialize his death and that of a friend. The artistic flame that was sparked by quilting motivated her desire to play in the kitchen, where she concocted mouthwatering delights such as "Delectable Mountain" meringues based on a quilt pattern of the same name the recipes for which she includes in her book. Most of all, Berlo credits the art of quilt making with teaching her to take joy in the process rather than the finished product and to accept messiness and patience as valuable parts of creativity. Illus. not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803213182
• ISBN 13: 9780803213180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144