Stitches in time

There are few things more comfortable, and comforting, than a handmade quilt.

Each fabric piece is carefully considered and placed, each stitch lovingly made. Each finished blanket tells the story of its place, its time, its family.

The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane has 105 quilts and 60 quilted objects in its collection. Not all were made in the region, but all ended up here, said Senior Curator of History Marsha Rooney.

Beginning today, 43 of those quilts, spanning 150 years, will go on display.

The “Quiltscapes” exhibit features an array of quilts. Some are traditional, sporting famous Lone Star or Log Cabin patterns. Others are more fanciful.

One, dating from 1900 to 1925, is made of silk cigar bands, which were popular collector’s items. Another features ribbons from every state represented at the 1909 Seattle World’s Exposition.

Still another, from the 1890s, is called the Walla Walla Bordello Quilt. As the story goes, Rooney said, the “ladies of the evening” made a quilt for their madam, using silks that came with packages of cigarettes, depicting celebrities of the day, flags, butterflies and other designs.

Ask Rooney about her favorite quilt, and she’s likely to rattle off stories about three or four. One, Mathilda Anderson’s Pineapple Quilt, can trace its roots to downtown Spokane.

Anderson started the quilt in 1910; it was finished in 1930 by her sister-in-law, Joanna.

“This young immigrant woman worked at The Crescent fur department and she saved all the satin lining scraps,” Rooney said. “There are all kinds of little nuggets like that.”

The fabrics used, the stitching styles and the patterns can tell a lot about a quilt’s history, she said. Some quilts were made from scraps of old clothing for the express purpose of providing warmth. Others tell a family’s history. Still others simply reflect the styles popular at the time.

“History quilts are everyday objects that because of their artistic qualities then end up in museums as … decorative arts,” Rooney said.

With “Quiltscapes,” she said, “We’re trying to tell the story behind the quilt, and the artistry behind the quilt.”

Two quilts from the late 20th century will be part of the exhibit, including the Jefferson School Quilt, made by Jefferson Elementary School teacher Linda Andrews and her sixth-grade students to mark the Bicentennial in 1976.

The oldest quilts on display date from 1820. Two of those, Minerva Hellen Wilson’s Lone Star Quilt and the Dittmer Quilt, reflect the popularity of the “central medallion” design. In these quilts, small fabric scraps are used to create a central dominant design, like a star.

Susan Eusden’s English Mosiac Quilt Top, also from the 1820s, features a less-prominent central design, a hexagon, surrounded by hundreds of smaller hexagons. The effect is much like an intricately designed tile mosaic.

Sarah Glover, mother of Spokane pioneer James Glover, has a quilt in the collection as well. She made her blue-and-white quilt, called “Birds in the Air,” around 1842. From a distance, it looks like a simple pattern of triangles. A close-up look reveals a more intricate design: rows of small triangles in perfect pattern.

“It’s a pretty, little quilt,” Rooney said.

The Crosby Quilt, created in 1860, isn’t connected to Spokane’s famous crooner. Instead, it can be traced to Vermont, where a woman made five identical quilts for her children detailing the family tree, Rooney said. Three of the quilts remain.

“When you hear the story about it, it’s amazing,” she said. “A lot of these quilts traveled with the family. Then they happen to end up here in the public trust.”

That public trust means the museum is responsible for maintaining the quilts – and that takes more than folding them up in a cedar chest with a handful of mothballs.

They’re stored on big rolls, rather than folded, to help preserve delicate fabrics. Volunteers and museum employees don white gloves before touching the fabrics to prevent stains and oil transfer from skin.

The quilts are stored in a room with other textiles, where the temperature is kept at about 72 degrees at 45 percent humidity.

“More than anything, you try to keep the climate steady,” Rooney said.

It’s the need for caution that prevents the quilts from being displayed more than once every decade or so. That, and the fact that they’re big. Getting the show down to 43 quilts was a difficult task.

“That was hard,” Rooney said. “We just don’t have the physical footage in the gallery for any more.”

The museum’s other quilts, however, will have a place in the exhibit.

For the first time, the MAC is setting up a kiosk in the gallery that will run a PowerPoint presentation featuring all of the museum’s quilts.