The Quilt Hunter Captures a Quilt-Sighting
As a reader, I first met Kate Wilhelm’s novels in fantasy and science fiction. In her 2002 novel Skeletons, Wilhelm poses a young college graduate against an old secret of her grandfather’s involvement with a lynching in Louisiana many years ago. The title Skeletons does indicate something lurking in closets but this is no cozy mystery with a confined, small-town group of people with shared interest. Rather the besieged heroine is dragged into a “witness protection” sort of life by a investigative newspaper and former teacher. They end up researching the lynching and the subsequent mystery behind it. A good read.
In the midst of this, however, Wilhelm uses the character of Aunt Lu to deliver some vital information. During the process, the heroine Lee discovers some rags in her grandfather’s possession – rags, “scraps of fabric, prints, just bits and pieces of this and that.” (90) The heroine’s Aunt Lu explains that, before World War I, good grade cotton cloth was scarce. “See how closely woven it is? Two hundred denier? So the flour wouldn’t sift through. Big fifty-pound sacks of flour or sugar. And the manufacturers know that the packaging was as invaluable as the contents, and they used cotton prints.” (92)
Aunt Lu continues that the “women would get together, and swap, looking for good matches, for colors that would go together, and every scrap was preserved for quilts. When the shirts or whatever got outgrown, they would rip the seams out and make something else, and eventually add the material to the quilt box.” (92)
Authors use small details like this example to make a minor character like Aunt Lu more valid. This, in turn, makes the heroine and her associates more real and more trustworthy. Details can also provoke a reader to stop and assess her own reality by presenting a past reality. Perhaps this comparison will make quilters appreciate the luxury of modern fabric stores
Imagine women handling fifty-pound sacks routinely and then patiently washing them and ripping out the seams to make clothing for their families. One phrase within Wilhelm’s writing caught my attention. The women took these precious flour sacks and would “wash them by hand and iron them like treasures.” (92) Wash by hand? Iron? Who of us remember either of those chores with affection. This was done prior to the time of the easy-to-use washers and dryers. Hand washing in a tub and rubbing the cloth over a wavy metal washboard with homemade soap in water heated on the stove is not a gentle action. It demands muscle as does the stringing of the wet cloth on the laundry line and fastening it with wooden clothespins. And then the ironing in days before the electric or steam iron. Women had to heat flatirons on the kitchen stove and, using potholders, press the cloth flat, forcing the weight of the iron to do the work.
No wonder women held onto cloth for years. Quilters, I am told, do the same with their stashes, accumulating pieces beyond what they can actually ever use. Here, I must confess that this quilt-hunter never throws cloth away – never. It is as precious a commodity to me as it was to Aunt Lu’s generation of frugal women. Cloth, like writing, has a story behind it and a future ahead of it. A good writer never throws any scrap of writing out, no matter how simplistic or outdated.
You just never know when you might need it somewhere else…like the elusive quilt, the right phrase lurks just ahead.
Since her first book in 1963, Wilhelm has written 50 novels in many fiction genres. She returned to mystery with the character of Barbara Holloway, a lawyer fighting for justice and her own happiness. Try one of Kate Wilhelm’s books.
Anne Kaler
