Quilt History, Community, and How Quilters Have Always Learned Together with Emily of Patchwork Revival

Originally recorded as an episode of The Quilt Scouts Podcast

Quilters have always found each other.

Sometimes around a quilting frame.

Sometimes through newspaper patterns.

Sometimes through PBS on a Saturday morning.

Sometimes through a YouTube rabbit hole at midnight when you suddenly decide, “Actually, I could probably make a quilt.”

This episode is part two of a crossover conversation with my friend Emily of Patchwork Revival, and it is such a good one if you love quilt history, community, and the weirdly comforting realization that quilters have always been out here figuring things out together.

This episode was originally recorded as part of The Quilt Scouts Podcast, before Quilt Scouts became Quiltbound. You’ll hear the old name in the recording and transcript, but this conversation fits beautifully into the Quiltbound world: curiosity, history, creative community, learning new things, and feeling connected to the quilters who came before us.

Part one of this conversation lives over on The Patchwork Revival Podcast, where Emily and I talked about quilting from colonial America through the 1930s.

This episode picks up from the 1930s and carries us all the way into modern quilting, online communities, and why quilters are still learning together, just in very different ways.

Listen to the Episode

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Emily and I continue our conversation about the history of quilting in America, focusing on how quilters gathered, learned, shared patterns, built community, and adapted from the 1930s through today.

We talk about Depression-era quilting, feed sack fabrics, quilting co-ops, the Bicentennial quilt revival, PBS quilting shows, the rise of quilt guilds, the internet, YouTube tutorials, online patterns, and the way quilting has become a global community.

It is part history chat, part community love letter, part “wow, we are all connected to women who were absolutely making half-square triangles before us.”

Which is oddly emotional, honestly.

Meet Emily of Patchwork Revival

Emily is the host of The Patchwork Revival Podcast, where she shares stories of quilters past and present and explores the history, meaning, and community behind quilting.

She learned to quilt from her grandmother when she was about eight years old, and that connection still shapes the way she thinks about quilting today.

One of the things I love most about Emily’s work is that she treats quilters as people first.

Not just makers.

Not just pattern users.

Not just finished-project machines.

People with stories, questions, histories, memories, and reasons for making what they make.

Her podcast feels like a little archive of quilt people, and I mean that in the best way.

Why Quilt History Matters

Neither of us are historians by training, and we say that very clearly in the episode.

We are quilters who are curious.

We both did research, pulled from books, museum resources, blogs, and quilt history sources, and then used this conversation to ask bigger questions about where quilting knowledge comes from and how it gets passed along.

That part matters.

Because a lot of quilt history has been passed orally, through families, neighborhoods, guilds, shops, and sewing circles. Some of it was documented. Some of it was not.

Some stories were preserved.

Some were lost.

And some were never treated as “important enough” to write down in the first place.

Which is exactly why it feels so meaningful to talk about it now.

When we learn quilt history, we’re not just learning about old patterns.

We’re learning about how people gathered, survived, taught each other, made beauty, built income, saved scraps, shared skills, and found comfort in the middle of real life.

The Golden Age of Printed Patterns

We pick up this conversation around the 1930s, when printed quilt patterns were becoming more widely available through newspapers, magazines, mail-order sources, and publishing companies.

Before this, quilt patterns were often shared much more locally. A person might see a quilt at a fair, receive a drawing from a friend, study a neighbor’s block, or learn a technique from a family member.

But printed patterns changed the size of the quilting community.

Suddenly, the same quilt block could travel much farther.

Instead of one small local group sharing a pattern, quilters across the country could make versions of the same design.

The community widened.

The knowledge spread.

And quilt patterns became part of a growing industry.

Pattern Names Were Not Always Consistent

Emily brought up the Ladies Art Company, which began publishing and distributing patterns in the late 1800s, and we talked about how pattern names could change depending on region, publisher, or the person sharing the block.

That is one of my favorite quilt history details.

The same block might be called one thing in one place and something completely different somewhere else.

Which makes sense, because quilters are nothing if not creative with both fabric and naming conventions.

Emily also mentioned books like Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them by Ruth Finley and The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America by Carrie Hall and Rose Kretsinger, both of which helped document pattern names, quilt blocks, and the women who made them.

That feels like an early version of the kind of quilt history collecting many of us are still interested in now.

Why is this block called that?

Who made it first?

Where did this version come from?

Why does every region seem to have its own opinion?

Quilt history is basically a research rabbit hole wearing a calico bonnet.

The Great Depression, Quilting, and Making Do

The 1930s were also shaped by the Great Depression, and that context matters.

Quilts were not always made for fun.

Sometimes they were made because they were needed.

Emily shared that her grandmother talked about quilting during that era as something people did because they had to, not necessarily because it was a hobby or creative outlet.

That perspective is grounding.

Because today, many of us quilt by choice. We buy fabric because we love it. We choose patterns because they excite us. We make quilts that cost more than buying a bedspread, because the point is no longer just warmth.

But for many quilters in the Depression era, quilts were tied to survival, resourcefulness, and necessity.

Scraps mattered.

Old clothing mattered.

Every usable bit of fabric mattered.

And still, in the middle of scarcity, people made beautiful things.

Feed Sack Quilts and Fabric as Marketing

One of the most fascinating parts of Depression-era quilting is the history of feed sack fabrics.

These were fabrics used for bags of flour, sugar, grain, cornmeal, salt, and other goods. During a time when families often had to choose between buying food and buying fabric, these bags became incredibly useful.

Companies eventually realized that people were reusing the bags for clothing, quilts, and household goods, so they started printing the bags with pretty designs.

Which means, yes, fabric became part of the marketing strategy.

A woman might choose one brand of flour over another because the bag would make a prettier dress, apron, or quilt.

That detail gets me every time.

It is practical.

It is resourceful.

It is also very “the packaging better be cute because I am turning this into clothing.”

Quilting During World War II

From there, we talked about quilting during World War II.

Materials were rationed. Factories shifted production to support the war effort. Cotton, muslin, ticking, and other textiles were often needed for uniforms, bandages, mattresses, and military use.

That meant quilting continued, but the context shifted again.

Some quilters used what they already had.

Some stretched supplies carefully.

Some made do because they had to.

Some quilted as a way to cope with the stress, uncertainty, and noise of the world around them.

Emily shared a story from a Texas quilt history book about a woman quilting during the Dust Bowl because the constant wind was unbearable, and sewing gave her something else to focus on.

That image has stayed with me.

A person sitting inside, listening to the wind, stitching because there was nothing else to do but keep her hands moving.

Sometimes quilting is comfort.

Sometimes quilting is survival.

Sometimes it is both.

Quilting Co-Ops and Quilts as Income

Another thread we touched on was quilting co-ops.

This is one of those topics I want to learn more about, because it adds another layer to how quilting functioned in people’s lives.

A guild is often a learning and social community.

A co-op, as we understand it in this conversation, is more about quilters coming together to make quilts that can be sold, helping create income for the makers.

Emily shared the story of Jessie Telfair, a Black woman in Georgia who lost her job after registering to vote. She later made multiple versions of a quilt spelling the word Freedom, likely as part of a quilting co-op or income-generating quilting effort.

That story is powerful.

It shows quilting as expression.

Quilting as protest.

Quilting as income.

Quilting as survival.

And it reminds us that quilt history is not one single story. It is many stories, from many communities, under many different pressures.

The Bicentennial Quilt Revival

Then we move into the 1960s, 1970s, and the quilt revival period.

The Bicentennial in 1976 played a huge role in renewing national interest in American crafts, folk art, colonial-era aesthetics, and quiltmaking.

Quilts became part of a broader cultural celebration of American history and handmade work.

This period helped spark more quilt classes, guilds, books, patterns, shows, and museum interest.

It also helped build quilting into more of the industry we recognize today.

Fabric shops.

Pattern companies.

Quilt books.

Classes.

Guilds.

Shows.

All of those things grew as quilting moved further into the world of hobby, art, and community rather than necessity.

The Rise of Quilt Guilds

Modern quilt guilds, at least in the form many of us recognize now, really started growing in the 1960s and 1970s.

Guilds gave quilters a way to gather, learn, share, show work, host speakers, trade tips, and build community outside of family or neighborhood sewing circles.

This is such an interesting shift.

Earlier quilting knowledge was often passed through family or local community.

By the quilt revival era, quilters were gathering more formally around the shared interest of quilting itself.

Not just because they needed blankets.

Not just because their mother or grandmother taught them.

But because they wanted to learn, connect, and make.

That feels like a big turning point.

Quilting on TV

Then came televised quilting.

And honestly, I love this part so much.

In 1979, Georgia Bonesteel launched one of the first quilting shows on PBS, bringing quilt instruction into homes across the country.

Then came quilters like Eleanor Burns, whose Quilt in a Day approach made quilting feel faster, more accessible, and less intimidating.

We also talked about Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting, Simply Quilts, and other shows that helped quilters learn from home before the internet became part of everyday life.

This was such a big shift.

Now, instead of needing a local teacher, class, guild, or family member, you could sit at home and watch someone demonstrate a technique.

Half-square triangles.

Log cabins.

Pressing.

Cutting.

Piecing.

It was instruction, encouragement, and community through a screen.

Sound familiar?

From TV to the Internet

By the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s, quilting knowledge started shifting online.

Blogs.

Forums.

Digital patterns.

Early websites.

Then eventually YouTube, Instagram, online memberships, podcasts, and video tutorials.

This is where quilting learning became almost instant.

Want to learn how to bind a quilt?

Search it.

Want to try foundation paper piecing?

Watch a video.

Want a pattern?

Download it.

Want to find quilters who love the same niche thing you love?

They are probably out there somewhere, posting about it.

The internet removed so many barriers, especially for people who could not get to in-person classes because of work, parenting, location, disability, cost, or schedule.

Emily talked about being a working mom and how in-person classes are not always realistic. Online learning makes quilting accessible in a way that earlier generations could not have imagined.

And I relate to that deeply, because my own quilting journey started with a YouTube rabbit hole.

No family quilter teaching me.

No formal class.

Just videos, curiosity, and the slightly reckless confidence of someone who did not know what she did not know yet.

A classic beginning, honestly.

Online Community Still Counts

One thing we came back to in this conversation is that online learning is incredible, but community still matters.

You can learn a lot from a YouTube tutorial.

But there is something different about having people to share the process with.

People who say, “Mine looked like that too.”

People who cheer when you finally get it.

People who laugh with you when the block goes rogue.

People who remind you that being bad at something new is not a moral failing.

It’s just beginner mode.

That’s what Quiltbound is built around.

Trying things.

Learning together.

Having a place to ask questions.

Feeling connected, even if you’re sewing alone in the middle of the night with a podcast playing in the background.

Quilters Have Always Been Learning

The longer we talked, the more obvious it became:

Quilters have always been learning from each other.

The format changes.

The community changes.

The tools change.

But the pattern is the same.

A quilter sees something and thinks, “I want to try that.”

Then she figures it out.

Maybe with a neighbor.

Maybe from a newspaper.

Maybe from PBS.

Maybe from a blog.

Maybe from an online group.

Maybe from a badge challenge.

That curiosity is part of quilt history too.

Quilters have always adapted, experimented, shared, borrowed, improved, reworked, renamed, and tried again.

That is the thread running through all of it.

Why This Conversation Feels So Quiltbound

At its core, Quiltbound is about creative exploration.

Trying something new.

Learning without perfectionism.

Connecting with other quilters.

Honoring the history of the craft while still making it feel alive and current.

This conversation with Emily reminded me that none of that is new.

We are not the first quilters to learn from community.

We are not the first quilters to chase a new method.

We are not the first quilters to take something traditional and make it fit our own lives.

We are part of a long, scrappy, creative, stubborn, generous line of quilters who kept finding ways to make, teach, gather, and share.

And I love that.

Rapid Fire with Emily

Before we wrapped up, I asked Emily a few rapid-fire questions.

Her answers?

Prints or solids: Prints
Learning in person or online: Online, though she loves in-person when it works
Machine quilting or hand quilting: Machine
Early bird or night owl: More night owl
What she listens to while quilting: Usually podcasts, sometimes audiobooks or music
Reproduction fabrics or modern fabrics: More reproduction
Modern or traditional quilt patterns: Traditional, or modern traditional

A very fitting answer for someone who can talk quilt history and still appreciate a good modern-traditional moment.

Where to Find Emily

You can find Emily and Patchwork Revival here:

Patchwork Revival website:
https://www.patchworkrevivalstudios.com

Instagram:
@patchworkrevivalstudios

Podcast:
The Patchwork Revival Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast platforms.

Make sure to listen to part one of this conversation over on The Patchwork Revival Podcast before listening to this episode.

Resources Mentioned

The Patchwork Revival Podcast:
Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Patchwork Revival Studios:
https://www.patchworkrevivalstudios.com

International Quilt Museum:
https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org

Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them by Ruth Finley

The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America by Carrie Hall and Rose Kretsinger

A New Deal for Quilts by Janneken Smucker

Ladies Art Company:
Mentioned in the conversation as an early quilt pattern publisher and distributor.

Georgia Bonesteel:
Mentioned as an early quilting television teacher on PBS.

Eleanor Burns and Quilt in a Day:
Mentioned as part of televised quilting history and quilt instruction.

Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting:
Mentioned as part of televised quilting instruction.

Related Quiltbound badges:
Quilt Historian, Quilt Cataloger, Quilt Photography, Quilt Bee, International Quilt Museum

Note: This episode was originally recorded before Quilt Scouts became Quiltbound, so some older names, links, and references appear in the audio and transcript.

About The Quiltbound Podcast

The Quiltbound Podcast is a cozy, campfire-style quilting podcast for quilters who want more creativity, confidence, and connection in their quilting lives.

Episodes explore quilting skills, creative ruts, tools, design, community, quilt history, outdoor adventures, and the small moments that help us grow one stitch at a time.

You’ll find solo episodes, quilter interviews, behind-the-scenes stories, and plenty of permission to follow the quilt history rabbit hole wherever it leads.

Episode Transcript

Below is the full transcript from this episode of The Quilt Scouts Podcast for accessibility and reference.

Note: This episode was recorded before Quilt Scouts became Quiltbound, so the transcript uses the original Quilt Scouts language to match the audio.

Read the Full Episode Transcript

Emily (00:00)
Read about a quilt, the freedom quilt, that a woman who was a cook at a segregated school had registered to vote. Her employer found out, he fired her. She had no work. But she was part of a, they think part of a quilting co-op where she made multiple iterations of this quilt where she spelled freedom. Her name was Jessie Telfair She was in Georgia and it was the freedom quilt. And they think that she had that pattern of an alphabet.

from the ladies art company that she probably was doing this as part of a co-op to try to make some money since she lost her employment.

then I think you have like the G's Bend quilters were kind of a co-op from that era. I'd have to do more research to really speak to that. But ⁓ there were so many walks of life that were kind of involved in using quilting as a tool for all kinds of things.

Megan (00:57)
Welcome to the Quilt Scouts podcast. I'm Megan, your quilt scout leader and fellow adventurous quilter. This is a cozy campfire chat for quilters who crave creativity, community, and a gentle nudge to try something new. Each week we'll talk about quilting, and the small adventures that help us grow more confident one stitch at a time. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get into it.

Megan (01:26)
Okay, I know this week's episode is coming early, but today's episode is a little extra special because we are officially in part two of a crossover series with the Patchwork Revival Podcast and I'm joined by my wonderful friend Emily, who you are about to fall in love with if you haven't already.

But before we go any further, need you to do something very important. If you haven't listened to part one yet over on the Patchwork Revival podcast, pause this episode, go listen to part one, and then come right back here. I'll wait. Seriously, I've got snacks. I'm not going

Okay, welcome back. I assume you did your homework.

Now we're picking up right where we left off diving into quilting from the 1930s through today, exploring how quilters gathered, learned, adapted, and built community through some pretty wild moments in history. And I couldn't imagine a better guest for the conversation than Emily. Emily is the host of the Patchwork revival podcast where she shares the stories of quilters past and present and explores the rich, sometimes messy, always fascinating history of our craft.

She is one of those people who makes you see quilting not just as something we do, but something that we are deeply connected to. So, Emily, welcome to the Quilt Scouts podcast. I'm so glad you're here.

Megan (02:43)
How are you?

Emily (02:44)
I'm great. How are you, Megan?

Megan (02:46)
I'm doing great. We are continuing our conversation through the history of quilting in America. we just recorded part one on the Patchwork Revival podcast and we are continuing into part two on the Quilt Scouts

Emily (03:02)
Yeah.

Megan (03:02)
Right. So if you haven't listened to part one, go over to the Patchwork Revival podcast. Listen to that because we start from essentially colonial America through the 1930s. And now we are going to be picking up from the 1930s to present day talking about how we used to gather as quilters, how we learn through our communities. But before we get into that, Emily, can you please introduce yourself to our listeners who may not know you yet and tell us a little about yourself?

Emily (03:28)
Yes, well, thanks for having me with you, Megan. I've been excited for this episode. Well, I guess I should say first, my name is Emily. I'm a quilter first and foremost. I learned to quilt from my grandma when I was like eight years old, and it just stuck with me through a lot of life. I am not eight years old anymore, so it's been a couple decades.

Megan (03:48)
you

Emily (03:49)
now

that I've been quilting and I love quilting. love talking about it. I love sharing it with people. So why not start a podcast because this is 2026. My podcast

Megan (04:00)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (04:03)
I really wanted to have it be a focus on quilters as people in the community and the connection that we can find through the quilts that we make, that we look at, that we love. So I wanted to just sort of bring ⁓ kind of the community aspect of quilting into, you know, the little...

side of the internet that is all about quilts and quilters. that's kind of where ⁓ I like to focus my energy on the Patchwork Revival podcast. Sometimes it's through interviews, sometimes it's through

me just blabbing and then sometimes it's for me actually trying to do some research and learn about sort of the historical parts of quilting just as kind of a passion project of mine obviously.

We made this disclaimer on the last episode, or part one of the episode, but it's probably worth mentioning again. I am not a historian by training or trade. I really just love it. And I have found sources that I like. I've tried to make it a point to go beyond Google or whatever AI stuff.

Megan (05:00)
you

Emily (05:21)
look at books and blogs and all the things. So there's great resources out there, but there's also a lot of holes and you know, we can also, I think, use what we know in our own kind of context as cultures to kind of fill in blanks where we can ask questions where we need to. So thanks for having me. I'm really excited to maybe get to know some new listeners and

just invite people into the community that we're building.

Megan (05:54)
Yeah, I'm excited you're finally on the Quilt Scouts podcast because I've been on the the Patchwork Revival podcast way back in the day and now we're finally we're finally having a little crossover series if you will but one of my favorite parts of your podcast is I feel like you really focus on sharing quilters stories and like documenting their stories and we talked a little bit on the last episode that we the part one episode we just recorded about how much of our history can be lost because a lot of it was like oral

or we have to take into consideration who's documenting that history and so much of it either gets lost or erased or things like that. So to have the opportunity to in today's day and age document quilter stories I think is really really cool and I love that you're doing that and taking the time to do that.

Emily (06:33)
Well, thanks. mean, the internet is doing a lot of this for us, which is very nice. I really, so I learned a quilt from my grandmother, like I said, and there's like not a day that goes by. So when I quilt, I feel like I'm quilting with her still. And I'm like, man, I wish I would have like remembered to ask her this or.

Megan (06:38)
and hot tube.

Ugh. Yeah.

Emily (07:00)
you know, all that kind of stuff. Cause even, even with my interest in it now, um, I'm like, I never asked her when did she actually learn or did she ever, or was it just like, yeah, I know how to sew, guess I'll start doing this kind of thing. So I know. Yeah, exactly.

Megan (07:01)
Yeah.

Thank

The questions you wish you had asked at the time,

Emily (07:22)
That's probably my bias and kind of trying to look back and be like, how did this happen? And how did this become something that we do? you know.

Megan (07:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, think the history of quilting, just history in general, has always fascinated me. you just mentioned, we both did a fair bit of research trying to get ready for this episode because I not a historian either or a researcher by any means, but it was really fun to dig into some different resources. I got online, went into the International Quilt Museum website. They are a great resource. I'll make sure to link anything that we do talk about. I'll make sure that I link it in the show notes.

But it was really fun to do a deep dive into the history of our craft or hobby, our art that we do, and learn a little bit more about where we come from as quilters, right? The evolution, specifically we've been talking about the evolution of focusing on how we learned as quilters through the different decades and the centuries of quilting and how we gathered in different formats.

Emily (08:14)
sure.

Megan (08:26)
And we left off on part one, essentially the 1930s, like post-World War I is kind of where we had left off. So we are talking about the golden age of patterns, basically printed quilt patterns, which didn't exist.

previously, we just started to see that emerge in like the late 1800s, early 1900s with patterns being printed formats, newspapers, magazines, like the ladies home journal, the farmer's almanac, And now we're kind of going into, like I said, the golden age of patterns where patterns are being written and distributed mass production,

So this really helped us go from patterns being shared locally, which we were just talking about on part one, within a small community to a larger community. Knowledge and information is being shared on a bigger scale, right?

Emily (09:11)
Yeah, did you come across the ladies art company at all?

Megan (09:16)
I think I did. That sounds familiar,

Emily (09:18)
So this was like 1889. So kind of this kind of leading into this era and probably through was the Ladies Art Company, which was kind of a similar thing. Like they were producing, publishing, distributing patterns.

I wanted to shout out, so two of my kind of favorite books to go back and look at are, one is by Ruth Finley, who is a name that you'll come up a lot when you start kind of Googling history of quilting. And she has this book, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them. And then there's also The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America by Carrie Hall.

and I think it's Rose Kretzinger. And the reason I brought these books up is because they were first published in like 1910s, 1930s-ish. And both of these books made it a point to try to sort of gather patterns and say, like draw pictures of it or do like plates, they called it.

Megan (10:13)
Okay.

Emily (10:26)
kind of a photographic evidence of a particular pattern and then collect all the names that they could find for that pattern. Cause the names differed by region, but they would also differ by publisher because like, let's be honest, there's only so many ways you can arrange half square triangles or diamonds or whatever.

Megan (10:38)
Yes.

Yeah.

Emily (10:51)
And

so, you know, people would put their own spin on it, their own flair, and they would publish it. And so it might come out under a different name under Nancy Cabot or the Ladies Art Company or whatever. So those, that was sort of too, something I found interesting is I was like, even in this era, there were already people kind of like me who were interested in like, man, well, why is this called a churn dash here and a monkey wrench here?

Megan (11:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Emily (11:20)
and they were

like kind of just documenting that that was a thing. Those books were really cool.

Megan (11:24)
Yeah, I'm almost picturing like an early version

of Brackman's Encyclopedia, right? Where she's kind of just the same thing. Yeah, okay, that's really cool. So they were taking the time to like gather and archive all that information.

Emily (11:29)
Mm-hmm. And it's like what you did. Yeah. That's kind of how...

Mm-hmm, and they're really cool books.

there's some text in there and they kind of speak to quilting bees and how just kind of very basic batting and techniques and stuff. They're not really like instructional manuals, but I think they're a pretty cool insight into like what was quilting to people. So interesting sources that I really...

Megan (11:49)
I see you.

Okay.

Emily (12:03)
like and I recommend for people who might have an interest in this.

Megan (12:07)
I've heard you mention those books before on your podcast. I think you've quoted a couple of them too. And just the covers of them are really beautiful too. Those would be wonderful to have in a personal library.

Emily (12:17)
Yeah, they are. found one just by chance in an antique store here and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna get that. But here, this is a little segue, I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic. But there are a lot of antique stores like thrift stores, but specifically antique stores here, kind of in our downtown area. And when you go in there, you will find so many quilting books.

Megan (12:24)
That's cool. That's a find.

That's okay.

Emily (12:46)
Like I have to keep myself under control sometimes. They're not always exactly what I'm looking for, but I walked through and found a book that was like, Patchwork Quilts of 1988. I was like, well, I was born that year. I've got to that book. And I'm like, I don't really love the quilts in there, but it's like a book of patterns. There's a gold mine out there.

Megan (12:54)
Yeah.

Yeah

I'll say pro

tip for anyone listening, so antique and thrift stores for the quilt books is, it's really good to know because I was telling you that when I was trying to research for this episode, I went to my library, didn't have anything useful in my library. I was very disappointed. when online I was trying to order books, I got a couple books, but again, the selections were still a little bit limited and I wasn't able to get them in like a timely manner, but.

Emily (13:17)
Thank

Yeah, at least out here in.

Isn't frustrating?

Megan (13:38)
So that would have been good to know. have to go to like some thrift stores or antique stores around here and try to find some books and do some more research.

Emily (13:43)
Yeah, and I, yeah,

and I wonder too, like I found one specifically that was like Texas Quilts, Texas Women. And it was published by, I think like the UT kind of publishing and it was almost like this lady who wrote it, Suzanne Yabsley. I'm looking at it right now. I don't have that just like rolling off my tongue, but ⁓ it's almost like she did this research almost as like a thesis or something for like graduate work. so

Megan (13:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Emily (14:12)
I feel like it's like also these little pockets of like publishing houses and stuff through universities and whatnot that maybe they're just not like big enough runs to go find it on, you know, a library shelf or something.

Megan (14:18)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, that was the problem was coming across is that they there are kind of hard to find, I think, because exactly what you just said, they're not mass produced. There's probably small numbers that are being printed at a time. And ⁓ yeah, there's a lot of information out there. You just got to take the time to gather it. Like, so for example, you're talking about the book is specifically about Texas quilts and Texas quilters. I've noticed when I was looking for books that there's almost a book on every state. Like I found one in Colorado.

Emily (14:56)
Yes.

Megan (14:57)
Colorado quilts and quilters and the history of quilting in Colorado. So like you could theoretically find a book from every state and learn about that specific state's history on quilting. ⁓ But just doing those books is tough.

Emily (15:07)
Well, you know what?

This is giving me another idea. You should, we should do an episode on Colorado and Texas. Because then, because now we know we can find resources for that, but it's interesting to try to condense like America into a timeline. But I, I still find it a really worthwhile thing to do because it gives us as quilters in, you know, the tw-

Megan (15:17)
That would be fun.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily (15:37)
2020s, like some context for what we are doing and what we're continuing to do and where all this knowledge came from. I, I love that. love. Yeah. And literally feeling a connection to some woman in 1920. Like I'm just, because this is like, I'm getting, I'm getting a little wild here, but I'm like, you know,

Megan (15:48)
Yeah.

fascinating.

Emily (16:06)
people today who are taking, say, quilt pattern writing courses. Do they even know and appreciate that there were women building businesses doing this in the late 1800s and early 1910s or whatever? There were women writing books on this and I think that's so cool.

Megan (16:21)
Yeah.

I can, I feel like, vouch that people do not know that because I was that person, you know, four or five, six years ago, taking a Quilt Pattern Writing course, I had no idea, like no context of what had occurred prior to my online course that I was taking, you know, remotely from my couch in my sweatpants.

Emily (16:42)
Right. Yeah.

It's really cool to think about. It's really neat.

Megan (16:48)
It is.

I love getting to one learn more because we've established I'm 100 % a nerd, but getting to feel connected to the past and where we come from. And it's, it's really fun to learn about. So

Emily (17:02)
Yeah, so this history is our history as quilters. And then also I think it does, so this brings up kind of a point and I think this is an interesting place for us to transition from patchwork revival where I tend to focus on like individual stories and journeys because I feel like that's.

Megan (17:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Emily (17:25)
kind of what quilting was before this time when we had a little bit more wide distribution of patterns, even fabrics, kits and things like that were starting to be kind of feel like that's when you kind of transition from, know, I'm doing this with my neighbors and my friends to I'm doing this because

I want a quilt and I can get all this stuff. But there was still ways that people were finding community and doing it together. It just started to look different.

Megan (18:04)
Yeah, they were still, so basically we are, because patterns are being distributed more widely, you have a bigger group of people making the same quilt in a larger community, essentially. It's just not these small little pockets where we're gathering. the community has gotten bigger, I guess, because knowledge is being distributed on a bigger scale. Does that make sense?

Emily (18:25)
Yeah, it's almost

like now instead of talking about the quilting community out in rural West Texas, now we're talking about the quilting community in America. The 1930s is an era of pretty significant hardship in our country. And the New Deal Roosevelt and all the things where they were

Megan (18:35)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (18:51)
trying to figure out, my gosh, what was it called? The works

Megan (18:56)
Okay, I want to pause here for just a second and add a little bit of context because this is such a fascinating piece of quilting history. So when we're talking about this moment in time, we're in the middle of the Great Depression Franklin D. Roosevelt had launched what's known as the New Deal. This was a series of programs designed to get people back to work and support communities during what was a really difficult economic time.

So one of those programs was the Works Progress Administration, often called the WPA. And within that, there was something called the Federal Art Project. So what's really special is that these programs didn't just focus on infrastructure and construction, it also invested in artists and makers and that included quilters.

these initiatives, quilting groups and co-ops were formed, especially in rural communities. So women were able to come together, create quilts, earn income, and preserve traditional patterns and techniques that may have otherwise been lost. Okay,

let's jump back in.

Emily (19:55)
Somebody's written a whole book on it.

A New Deal for Quilts by Janneken Smucker. And it essentially talks about,

Megan (20:00)
Okay. cool.

Emily (20:06)
Basically, kind of unlike a bigger scale is I feel like this is when co-ops were kind of starting when, know, like they were sort of the government was trying to sort of revitalize the like economy that was in complete shambles. And so, ⁓ you know, they would kind of subsidize basically work, work for citizens. And so there were women who were

Megan (20:13)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Emily (20:34)
and maybe even men, I don't know, who were involved in making quilts to try to find a job, make work, create work. ⁓

Megan (20:46)
So

quilts as an industry.

Emily (20:48)
Yeah, I feel like it

kind of started a thing, you know? And then also think about too, this was the era, like when my grandmother was becoming, ⁓ you know, kind of preteen, teenager-ish era. So she's starting to have to help, you know, as more than a child, she's like starting to have to help around the home. And yeah, and I mean, she'll, she talked about it a little bit and was like, we weren't making quilts

Megan (20:51)
Okay.

contribute to the home,

Emily (21:16)
because we wanted to. We were making them because we had to. And so I feel like this is maybe kind of where we have that romanticized idea of like stretching everything we had, kind of creating abundance out of scraps and making quilts that were really, for some people, necessary for survival. I feel like a lot of times we just gloss over like how

Megan (21:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Emily (21:42)
bad this was for people. Yeah, I mean people were starving and you know it was just terrible so

Megan (21:43)
How hard that was for people, yeah.

I think that's a good reminder to know that we didn't always make quilts for fun. ⁓ Sometimes, like you said, it was hard. Yeah, it was not maybe fun for them. that's a really good reminder and good perspective too to keep in mind talking about the history.

Emily (21:57)
Some people probably still did, but a lot of people did not.

so then there's actual co-ops where people are making quilts. But then besides that, think that's really just kind of an extension through World War II era stuff. If you had certain fabrics and all that, I'm sure everything was just rationed.

Megan (22:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Emily (22:26)
No, because they, ⁓ maybe a factory that had been producing like beautiful printed calicoes now needed to be making like white muslin for bandages or a ticking stripe thing for mattresses or whatever.

Megan (22:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Uniforms or... Yes.

Emily (22:46)
I think that's too a way that we kind of start picturing these scrappy quilts that we all kind of consider our early ancestors making because this was sort of an artificial ⁓ sort of scarcity, like era of artificial scarcity when, you know, we had just different priorities as a country.

Megan (23:08)
Okay.

Yeah.

Emily (23:11)
or supporting what we really needed to. And so I think there were plenty of women who were probably still just quilting and maybe finding, I know that a lot of us today when we quilt, it's an escape for us because just there's something about doing things with your hands that...

can help your mind. And I know too, in the this Texas Quilts book I was talking about, there was a woman who was talking about quilting in like the Dust Bowl

they couldn't get out. They couldn't do anything. But she was like, I had to quilt because the constant wind noise was driving me crazy. But if I was quilting, I was somewhat distracted from it. Isn't that crazy?

Megan (24:00)
That's kind

of nuts to think about like

Emily (24:02)
I know

it's actually kind of horrifying. you know, things like that, I mean, you know, we had a totally different kind of cultural context and stuff for the things we were doing, but we still had humanity, like humans are humans and we have been. And so I think that was probably too a way, you know, people were contributing to the war effort by.

growing their own vegetables, maybe making their own quilts and their own decor and so that these factories could divert their products and energy to supporting soldiers.

Megan (24:29)
⁓ Garments and things.

so there's that community aspect of it coming together collectively to support the war effort, support our communities while we have people off fighting, right? like you touched on like the scarcity of materials and things like that as well, because, well, there's still lots of materials, but they're being diverted for other uses, right? Not necessarily home decor, yeah, exactly, luxury items. This reminds me of, I was reading up on the feed sack quilts.

Emily (24:41)
for sure.

for our luxury as quilters.

Megan (25:06)
Do know anything? I thought that was fascinating. They were talking about like the printed bags.

Emily (25:06)
Yeah, well, I think that's what it.

Yeah, no, and that's why they that's why they did it, right? Was during like the 30s. It was kind of, think, intended as like a morale boosting thing. And it's like, you know, if you're going to spend your money buying flour, you're going to have this flour sack that you can do something with.

Megan (25:15)
Yeah

Mm-hmm.

it was such an interesting history. I think I was I think there was an exhibit at the International Quilt Museum that I was reading up on because they featured all of these So essentially for people listening Quilts made from food bags like the bags that your flours your grains your sugar your salt and things that would come in right your corn whatever Because at the time we're talking about depression era

people were choosing between buying food and buying fabric to make clothes or, you know, bedding or whatever. Obviously we're gonna choose food most of the time. ⁓ the companies that were selling these food products were putting their products in printed fabric. So like pretty fabrics rather than just like a cotton white bag or whatever, they were putting printed fabrics so people could then...

buy the food and then reuse the bag to make garments or bedding or whatever. ⁓ And the part that I thought was really interesting was that actually became like a marketing tactic. So you had several different companies that sold They would choose the print of their packaging based on how desirable it would be in a garment, So was just like, women were choosing certain brands of flour over another because the bag was prettier and they could make a dress for their daughter or whatever, know, from it. ⁓

Emily (26:46)
Yeah.

Megan (26:47)
Yeah, I was reading up on all that. mean, I feel like you probably already knew all this, but I was like, this is so fascinating. One from ⁓ being resourceful, but then also like the marketing part of it. was like, well, that's really interesting.

Emily (26:57)
Yeah, it is really cool. And then it's interesting too, because now we have, you know, in our, basically glut of fabric that you can choose from today. You can choose Civil War reproduction fabrics. You can choose 1930s reproduction fabrics. And those really mimic those feed sacks that people were using. And I don't know. I don't know how long that continued, but I kind of was imagining it may have also continued kind of through the 40s, you know, like the

Megan (27:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

don't either.

Okay.

Emily (27:25)
throughout the wartime period and stuff like that. And then I feel like the 50s probably kind of blended into that because that was like when we're just like rebuilding and having our baby boom and all that stuff.

Megan (27:34)
Exactly. Yeah. I think that goes

from a period of scarcity to kind more of a period of abundance in our country where we do have kind of a good resurgence and the economy is doing better, you know, and now fabric has kind of gone back to more of a luxury item where you, again, you can, you have the choice of which fabric and which art you're choosing and purchasing, And that kind of goes into the 1960s, 1980s where we have what

we refer to a lot as the quilt revival period. craft movement, what's that?

Emily (28:05)
Cause the bicentennial, well,

the bicentennial was 1976. So that was our 200 year anniversary after the American Revolution, where we had our independence. And, um, I didn't really appreciate how huge the bicentennial was like through all walks of life, areas of the country, cultures, like it was a big deal.

Megan (28:09)
Yes, happened in 1976.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a big deal because there was this, Yes, I think we're kind of seeing it again now this year with the 250th anniversary. There's a lot happening around that in museums and whatnot celebrating 250 years. the 200th anniversary in 1976 was such a big deal because there was this renewed interest in, romanticizing somewhat the birth of the country.

Emily (28:34)
Like a Like a celebration.

Megan (28:56)
So we have this resurgence, the colonial era, yeah, we have this new interest in American crafts, folk art, and the quilts went right along with that. So there is this big resurgence in new quilters kind of coming onto the scene and joining the art of quilting at that with that, I think there was a lot of

Emily (28:56)
the colonial era kind of.

Megan (29:17)
growth with more pattern production, more classes happening, more guilds probably coming together and in groups of people coming together to like learn to learn how to quilt, right?

Emily (29:22)
Like industry.

Yeah, to learn how to quilt, an interesting thing that I found out as well is that there were, so this kind of talks about quilting co-ops, which I haven't done a ton of research on, but I've just kind of keep stumbling across them. ⁓ you know the whole, so in the civil rights era,

the kind of grassroots movement of like the 1960s where people from the North would come down to like the South that was still suffering under kind of the Jim Crow era. And they would basically encourage people to, you know, no, you can register to vote. So here's how you do it. But there was a lot of just, you know, really sad, retaliative things that happened. Like I

Read about a quilt, the freedom quilt, that a woman who was a cook at a segregated school had registered to vote. Her employer found out, he fired her. She had no work. But she was part of a, they think part of a quilting co-op where she made multiple iterations of this quilt where she spelled freedom. Her name was Jessie Telfair She was in Georgia and it was the freedom quilt. And they think that she had that pattern of an alphabet.

from the ladies art company that she probably was doing this as part of a co-op to try to make some money since she lost her employment.

But there was some documentation I read that essentially one of these kind of activist groups that had come and tried to kind of help, black people in the South find their footing and like kind of reject this disenfranchisement to, you know.

express themselves and find ways. And one of the ways they suggested that she do that after she lost her job was through quilting and through a co-op. then I think you have like the G's Bend quilters were kind of a co-op from that era. ⁓ I'd have to do more research to really speak to that. But ⁓ there were so many walks of life that were kind of involved in using quilting as a tool for all kinds of things.

Megan (31:43)
you talking about a quilting co-op is the first I've heard of it. So for myself and then for listeners who maybe aren't clear, me if I'm wrong, I feel like a guild is like a learning community where we're making quilts for ourselves, learning how a quilting co-op is a group of quilters coming together to make a quilt for sale, to create income.

Emily (32:01)
That's what my understanding is as well.

Megan (32:02)
Okay.

Emily (32:03)
So around the 60s, 70s, 80s, I think was when there were starting to have museums that were displaying quilts, which meant they were buying quilts as part of their exhibits and things like that. And so I think the co-op was a way to sort of support communities financially by making quilts that they could sell to collectors or benefactors, things like that.

Megan (32:22)
Okay.

Interesting that would be a that would be a fun one to research too and kind of dig a little bit more into the co-ops because like I said I haven't heard of that before but that does make sense and the context of what was going on in history too so So yeah we have the growth of guilds, classes, quilt shows also kind of start to come on the scene here in this quilt revival period where we weren't really doing that so much

Emily (32:41)
Yeah.

Megan (32:53)
beforehand, but it was just becoming a bigger part of the community. Showing quilts displaying quotes, they're being shown in museums, things like that.

Emily (32:57)
And the yeah, I'm.

Sort of becoming an industry, I feel like is one I kind of envision the quilting industry because we did have books being published, patterns being published, kits being sold. And even in the 80s, like early 90s, if you were a PBS kid, you probably saw some like quilting shows.

Megan (33:04)
Yes.

Yes, I was actually going to talk about that. Yeah, going into the 80s and transitioning from, I don't say from print media, because the print media is still there, printed patterns. But now we have the addition of televised quilting shows where now people are learning across the nation. We're all sitting down together to watch the same quilting show. So now we being distributed on an even bigger scale, televised.

Georgia Bonesteel was the first quilt TV show on PBS started in 1979. Yeah, so this is like right after the 1976 bicentennial, right? So 1979, Georgia Bonesteel. And then we also have the likes of,

Emily (34:00)
Okay.

Eleanor, I was going to say you got to be coming up with Eleanor Burns She is.

Megan (34:12)
Eleanor Burns, right? I don't know

when hers was, 90s?

Emily (34:17)
I think it was, so her company was Quilt in a Day. And I think, I kind of think they started eighties, nineties. Maybe she had books and stuff published. And she may have been self-published. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but she, yeah, she was the person who, so she, her stick was, grandma loved Eleanor Burns. And her stick was, do I make,

Megan (34:36)
you're either.

Yeah.

Emily (34:46)
quilting more efficient for moms, because she was a mom of many children, like two or three children, I think. And so, you know, she came up with a way to make a lot of cabins speedier. Basically, she came up with like strip piecing. Still stripping after 25 years, I have it. I love Eleanor Burns.

Megan (34:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, well she's got her books still stripping.

I love

Emily (35:07)
And he was very prolific.

And so she had a show. And then there's Fons and Porter, Love of Quilting, which is still on PBS. ⁓

Megan (35:13)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (35:19)
Liz Porter and Marianne Fonz are now kind of, they're no longer, you know, regularly hosting or attending the show, but they had it. And it was like, I loved watching those shows because it was not just buy my stuff. It was like, this is how we make a half square triangle, or this is how you sew it and press it. And I was like, it was instructional. It was really cool.

Megan (35:37)
Yes? Yes?

Yeah, so it's

just a new way that quilters were learning at the time period. So we've gone from having to learn a person in a class, in a guild, to learning from a printed pattern or instructions, now we have the television, right? And now we're learning on TV real time from these women, from these quilters who are hosting TV shows, which is super cool.

Emily (36:05)
Yeah, those are the big ones I know.

Megan (36:08)
Yeah,

Alex Anderson? Do you recognize that name? I don't. Yeah, so Alex Anderson, hosted Simply Quilts from 1998 to 2006. So a little bit more recent, but.

Emily (36:10)
Hmm. No. But, you know.

simply quilts. There was Nancy. Do remember Nancy Zieman sewing with Nancy?

She passed away a while back. She was the blonde lady.

Simply Quilts. Okay, I recognize the face. I just googled her so I could see if I...

Megan (36:36)
Yeah, I was like, this is just like part of

Emily (36:38)
this is a somewhat ⁓ embarrassing question. Maybe I email ⁓ Al Gore. When was the internet a common enough thing that people were posting stuff on the internet? Because I know like Quilt in A Day.

Megan (36:57)
Yeah.

Emily (36:58)
There's a it might have been the quilter on fire podcast I want to say Or maybe it was the craft industry Alliance Interviewed Eleanor Burns. This was many years ago and she was talking about how they literally would film and then

Megan (37:05)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (37:19)
sell the show to PBS and it got picked up and so then she would film in front of like a live audience and stuff and then I kind of think they did some stuff on the internet also. I could be wrong. Yeah, that's-

Megan (37:31)
That probably would have been until like the mid 90s when that was becoming more

common. Like a computer in the home was more commonplace with dial-up internet and all that fun stuff. interesting. Yeah, because then we have the overlap, like you said, between TV and internet. So we're talking mid to late 90s, early 2000s where that starts to become more commonplace. So we have TV shows that are still airing, but then we also have things like blogs, like quilting blogs are coming on the scene.

Emily (37:38)
right.

Megan (37:59)
YouTube isn't a thing yet, but we have blogs, forums, ⁓ and digital quilt patterns because again now we're able to distribute things via the internet. ⁓ So there's that bridge, that gap between TV learning and digital learning that we're seeing at that time period.

Emily (38:14)
Yeah, which is interesting too because I do feel like TV. Okay, so even if you were in, I don't know, 1955, I wanna make a quilt I'm gonna buy a pattern. I'm gonna go to my catalog, find the pattern I want, send this off. You I still have to reach out to have this knowledge come into me. But once you start talking about TV and internet,

Megan (38:34)
Yes.

Emily (38:40)
Like it's there, like it's already with you. You have it right there with you. and also this gets into a little bit of...

stuff but it's I think important to remember that post World War II America like you know the golden age and the baby boom that was when people's like multi-generational stuff was not so not valued as much right it was all about my satellite family I'm gonna go out I'm gonna make my own way all these things and I'm like I feel like that's kind of when you know like well okay well you can go buy stuff it's probably cheaper to go buy a bedspread than

Megan (39:07)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (39:17)
buy fabric materials, spend time, you know, making a quilt.

Megan (39:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really good

Emily (39:24)
It just became a little more society and culture became a little bit more isolated. Yeah.

Megan (39:29)
Yeah, disconnected is the word I was thinking of. Yeah, isolated

is a good word. Yeah, so rather than learning from your mom and your grandma, like you said, you've kind of removed yourself from that close, that family, your own family. And now we're finding other ways to learn these skills.

Emily (39:43)
But I think it's really cool to imagine that, okay, now we have a TV program where you're like, quilting. Maybe I want to try that or whatever.

Megan (39:50)
Mm-hmm.

And the thing,

the thing to like about that is it's free, right? Well, essentially, mean, let's not have the TV and everything else like that, but like PBS, you know, is it's free television program. So it makes it more accessible, which is really cool. So you have more people able to get access that information on a bigger scale for less, which is pretty cool.

Emily (39:57)
Yeah, you had to buy TV or whatever.

Oh, I was also gonna say, feel like the 90s was when my grandmother got back into quilting. I wanna say her and her sister decided, they would go out on these road trips and RV trips and stuff. they...

Megan (40:21)
⁓

Like got into it for fun at that

point, not for necessity.

Emily (40:32)
Yes, and

they kind of got into it back at this time. Like they went to a quilt shop and found a pattern and decided, you know, how they wanted to do it. And they kind of did it. They each bought their little kit or whatever and did it. And then they would talk to each other, show each other that kind of stuff. So I don't know as much about the.

Megan (40:53)
Yeah.

Emily (40:55)
development and sort of evolution of a quilt guild. Did you read much about that?

Megan (41:00)
it wasn't really to like the quilt revival that we start to see guilds as we know them. Like the 70s and 80s where we start to get these structured groups you have to, you know, the present day guild as we know them, I feel like doesn't come on the scene until like the 60s and 70s. That's my understanding. Yes.

Emily (41:17)
And that was probably just growing. And

I can imagine that's when...

you know, that it...

It's always, you know, it's kind of true. You always got to look at the money and like economy and industry. so TV programmers are like, Hey, there's a whole bunch of people who want to see this quilting stuff. So then I'm imagining we're having shops dedicated to quilting and fabric. They're probably having classes because you know, like Eleanor Burns would have quilt in a day. Her shows were filmed in front of a live class. Like it was.

Megan (41:53)
which I love

Emily (41:54)
Yeah, I

Megan (41:54)
that. That's so iconic, like a live studio audience.

Emily (41:57)
know and they're like at machines like sewing along with her. So I'm like, I'm imagining too people seeing, ⁓ well, I wonder if there's a class here that I could try. So.

Megan (42:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It created that demand

probably locally. So people are seeing it on TV and they wanted that in their local community. So I could totally see the demand being created and then the supply happening with new fabric shops, new classes and guilds happening in the communities. ⁓

Emily (42:23)
Yeah, kind of community like building

itself around that kind of perspective on quilting.

Megan (42:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Emily (42:32)
Because I feel like by this time, truly, truly, let's be clear, anyone of our generation, and probably a little bit older, if you want a cheap bed covering, you should just go buy you one. Making it is not the cheapest thing.

Megan (42:49)
Yeah.

Why buy a bedspread when I can make one for three times the cost and a month of my time?

Emily (43:03)
Yeah,

and like many tears and curse words and some of my soul woven into it. But I, so I feel like this is when like, you know, if you're quilting, it's cause you like it and you've found your people. You found your process that you really like.

Megan (43:10)
Exactly.

Yes.

it's becoming more of a hobby. A luxury, like it's something you do if you have free time, expendable income, right? More of a luxury, more of a hobby that you can do and less out of necessity and scrappiness, I feel like.

Emily (43:36)
Yeah, exactly.

But there's always been, I feel like there's always been quilters who want to emulate quilts of the Civil War era because they like those like really dark saturated colors and the fabrics that they have. Or people who, you know, lean more towards the 1930s reproductions. They want to make a like sun bonnet sue out of feed sack fabrics.

there's always been still this like connection to the style and the different eras that we see you know in our history so ⁓

Megan (44:12)
Yeah. Yeah. I never really

understood the 1930s reproductions until I was researching the Feed Sack information. Because I always saw that like at Fabric stores like 1930s reproductions. I was like, okay, why, why that? Why is that so popular that specific decade? Yes, exactly.

Emily (44:28)
Why are there like three rectangles on a mint green background? Or like,

yeah, strawberries or something.

Megan (44:36)
Yeah, it's like

the little ditzy. Yeah, I never really understood that and I feel like now I'm starting, now that I'm learning history and researching these things, I'm starting to understand the importance and the popularity of that, I guess is what I'm saying.

Emily (44:47)
Yeah,

and why it became a style at all. You know, like, why would it have changed? Here we go. Kind of neat.

Megan (44:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So I feel like that brings us into present day where

Quilting has now become a global community. We're able to reach out across the world and learn from each other and share information globally, which is really now we have YouTube tutorials happening,

the internet, have Instagram, TikTok, podcasts like this. So it's been a really cool evolution to see how we learn and how we have evolved as a quilting community that way.

Emily (45:23)
In thinking about the internet, the main thing I think about, I'm like, and this is when stuff became instantaneous. I wanna learn how to quilt, bam, here's this tutorial or here's this pattern that I don't have to wait.

I feel like a lot of the quilt shows would reference, they'd have like a companion magazine or something. They'd be like, oh yeah, we're making this pattern from this issue. So you still might have to go buy it. But now we can just download patterns. we live in a place.

Megan (45:53)
Yeah.

Emily (45:56)
time where we always look for opportunity for, you know, how can we make money? How can we kind of capitalize on this trend or whatever? what I love about the internet is that the accessibility just

I think it can only serve to invite people into a community that they might not have ever even imagined or known that they wanted or needed. I mean, I work. I'm a working mom. one quilting class because it was offered on one Saturday when I was not on call and I was like, can do that. And I was interested and thought, I'll try it out.

Megan (46:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily (46:34)
I can't make it to quilting classes like nine out of 10 times. You might have to have child care to do that or to feel like you can do that. And so I, I love that there's so much knowledge out there at, you know, the just touch of your fingertips. But I, it does, it does. I still encourage people to

Megan (46:43)
Yeah.

It removes a lot of barriers for people. Yeah.

Emily (47:03)
find community because that's what quilting kind of is. Even if you're just sewing in the middle of the night with a YouTube tutorial in the background or whatever, or listening to a podcast, a lot of people listen to podcasts while they sew, you're part of something. You really are.

Megan (47:09)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's so funny because you mentioned an entry point for a lot of That was my story. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole

that's how got into it. I just was watching these videos first. I was like, okay, well, I know how to sew. Like I can figure that out. And that's how I started quilting. Like I didn't have anyone that taught me and my mom, my grandma. I didn't have anyone in my family that was a quilter that I was aware of. I learned later on that my great grandma was a quilter, but she had passed like when I was very, very little.

So that was my entry point was YouTube. I mean, had someone not taken the time to make these videos and teach people on the internet, I would have never found myself in the quilting community. But even having started as a lone quilter, I mean, I was doing it on my own. I was just like on YouTube trying to figure out how to do things. ⁓ There's only so much I feel like you can learn from that. Really it does come down to having a community, whether that's an in-person community or an online community like Quilt Scouts. Like we're learning from each other there all the time.

Or just having not even to learn but to have that support, right? To have that feedback of like, yep, that's normal. That happens all the time or whatever. Or my block looked like that too. ⁓ I just feel like that's important.

Emily (48:29)
Yeah.

It is fun. I mean important and it's also just fun. Like we're allowed to have fun. I think we don't have enough fun as adults. And like I remember I would go, I mean I was so lucky. I had my, I had three grandparents till I was 30. And I, so I would go like even when I was, so I was quilting when I was in like

Megan (48:41)
I feel like sometimes we forget that

⁓

Emily (49:01)
undergrad and med school, like, trust me, I was not, I was not like showing my work to people and being like, what do think of this? Or what if I, you know, ⁓ but I would, I kind of was, but cause I was not really like ashamed, but I was like, nobody cares about this except like, yeah. And so I would, go for like a week.

Megan (49:10)
You are a closet quilter probably, right?

Yeah, no one else was doing it, so like...

Emily (49:24)
to my grandma's house like every so every couple months I'd try to go for like a week and we would hang out and she would like she kept a lot of her stuff in like pizza boxes like she would get she would ask the pizza store for clean boxes extra ones this was like something I'm sure they saw on like a show you know and so she

Megan (49:36)
Yes.

I love this.

Eleanor Burns mentioned

it one time and you know, and it was...

Emily (49:53)
Yeah. Well, you she

wasn't going to pay for like a box, you know, like she would like pull it out, open it up and have like all these blocks for a project and like, show me what she was doing. She would help me. Like she'd just give me fabric from her stash. I mean, she had explosions of it everywhere. And so that was just fun. It was just fun. And I feel like we've

Megan (49:57)
No.

yeah.

Emily (50:22)
of found that with our ⁓ nine patch and our sweater weather stuff even just sharing things online i'm like why am i doing this like i get so angry about certain parts of social media and then i'm like it's because i actually really like feeling connected to people on this level and through this and i feel like that's why quilt scouts has been successful and so welcoming to people is because we just were

Megan (50:26)
Yeah.

Emily (50:50)
like allowed to just enjoy what we're doing and make friends doing it, you know?

Megan (50:55)
It's to be able to connect and share and laugh together over silly mistakes, you know what mean? And be able to share that in a safe place where you feel like you're not gonna be judged or critiqued harshly, but we can just kind of like laugh at it. Like, yeah, I did that too. And yeah, I don't know. I I haven't been quilting very long, so I feel like, I still feel like a new quilter. And I feel like the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know when it comes to what...

Emily (51:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Megan (51:23)
all quilting has to offer. with all that being said, I feel like I'm learning right along with people. You know, as we learn things together, tackle badges each month. There's so many times when I'm learning a technique right along with people. So and I learned from the other, Scouts and the members and it's, it's been really fun. So

Emily (51:35)
Yeah.

I think that's basically what quilting is, right? Like my grandmother did, ⁓ she did so many different kinds, you know, she would do patchwork. She did some paper piecing for like a double wedding ring pattern. She did applique, she did like red work or embroidery stuff. And so she was learning too, because it was fun and she wanted to and she...

Megan (51:43)
Mm-hmm.

of them.

Emily (52:07)
kind of had those foundational skills. And so, you know, I feel like that's what basically all quilters are doing. You're kind of learning, even if you're kind of in your wheelhouse, you're still practicing. And it's funny because the more you do, like I've never cared. Honestly, I have never cared about cutting points off.

Megan (52:17)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (52:31)
like triangles, flying geese, whatever. I'm like, who cares? Nobody cares about that. I don't care about it. But like now when I make my triangles and stuff, I've been doing it for long enough that I'm like, I don't cut my points off and I don't even, I don't think about it. I'm like, oh, my grandma was right. Like if you just practice, you're like, you're always, you're always learning. It's a practice, right? It's all about the process and progress. You're never gonna...

Megan (52:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

You

Yes.

Emily (53:00)
be perfect and I don't think anybody ever really wanted to, you know.

Megan (53:06)
It's cheesy as this is, but it's like the journey, not the end destination, right? It's the process of learning. And I feel like the idea of Quilt Scouts has always stemmed from is that challenging yourself and trying something outside of your norm, or pushing yourself, you know, maybe outside of your boundaries a little bit. And this can apply to any level.

Whether you're a beginner or if you've been quilting for 30 years and you consider yourself an expert I can guarantee there's probably something that you have not tried That's worth trying and worth Being bad at to start with honestly because we're all we all the first time we try something new or a new technique or whatever You're gonna be bad at it So being willing to be uncomfortable with that and try it anyway and try something new I feel like that's where we grow where we have fun and where we evolve as quilters so the badge system is kind of

the purpose behind that is pushing you to try something new and challenge yourself.

Emily (53:58)
And that's what I think that's what quilters have done from the beginning. Yeah, they were just like, hey, I gotta get, I gotta get this done. And I saw someone down there made this really cool pattern and now I'm gonna have to do that because.

Megan (54:02)
Absolutely. Whether they realize they were doing it or not, right?

or trying new ways to do things. Like you're

talking about Eleanor Burns, her whole thing was finding new ways to do something quilters have been doing for a while, right? But how can I do this better, more efficiently, faster, whatever?

Emily (54:28)
And I feel like patterns are very similar, right? There may be a thousand ways to make a kind of traditional basket block out of triangles, but there's all different ways to do it.

Megan (54:34)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, we've worked all the way from colonial era to present day through our YouTube phases and blogging and our online communities. It was a really fun conversation. I feel like I learned a lot. So thank you so much for doing with me. Before we wrap up though, I always ask my guests a rapid fire series of questions. So the rules is you just have to go with your gut. Don't overthink it.

Emily (54:55)
I did too.

Megan (55:08)
Are you game?

Emily (55:09)
Don't overthink

it, that's my specialty. So no promises, but okay.

Megan (55:14)
Okay.

prints or solids?

Emily (55:17)
Mmm, prints.

Megan (55:18)
learning in person or learning online.

Emily (55:22)
online. I would love to learn in person, it just doesn't happen. So I do it online.

Megan (55:30)
machine quilting or hand quilting.

Emily (55:33)
machine.

Megan (55:34)
Early bird or night owl?

Emily (55:36)
Mmm, more night owl.

Megan (55:39)
What do you listen to when you're quilting? Podcasts, audiobooks, or silence music?

Emily (55:47)
usually podcast occasional audiobook.

sometimes music.

Megan (55:52)
reproduction fabrics or modern fabrics.

Emily (55:56)
more reproduction.

Megan (55:59)
modern or traditional quilting? Quilt patterns, I should say. Traditional. Okay, thank you so much. So one last thing, where can people find you if they want to find more Patchwork Revival studios? What's your socials? What's your website? Where can we find you?

Emily (56:01)
Traditional. A modern traditional.

That's a lot.

Well,

I'm grateful and I hope that people will check out part one of the episode on the Patchwork Revival podcast, which is available Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, pretty much wherever you would get your podcasts. I do have a website. It's www.patchworkrevivalstudios.com. I typically have show notes, kind of blog style show notes, maybe a little more detail there so you can check those out if you want to. ⁓ Some patterns, some tutorials,

of stuff. And then I'm on Instagram at Patchwork Revival Studios. So those are probably my big places. Podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, website.

Megan (57:01)
And do you have anything new and exciting coming up that you want to share?

Emily (57:05)
I have some patterns that I'm hoping to kind of, I'm just sewing samples and kind of sharing them as they come out. So I have a couple of those planned for the year. And then before we know it, it's going to be time for the sweater weather sampler again. Yeah. So that's going to be, you know, a big focus coming up. So stay tuned. There's a lot of really fun stuff.

Megan (57:18)
Is it sweater weather season?

Yeah,

and I was just that reminds me I know you did a whole series on sharing stories from this past year's Sweater Weather Sampler. So if you want to hear more if you're if this is the first time that you're hearing the words sweater weather sampler and you want to learn more head over to the podcast check out her stories there.

Emily (57:43)
Yeah, we had, speaking of community, we had a really fun community of people participating in the Sweater Weather Sampler and a lot of people were kind enough to sort of write their stories and let me read them out loud and share them. So that was really fun and really special and I was really grateful to get to share that with everyone because I feel like it's just... ⁓

inviting people into a community and kind of showing people what quilting can really be and how we can really connect.

Megan (58:15)
Yeah,

that was a really amazing community that came together with the sampler. And I'm excited for this coming here. Always. All right, Emily, thank you so much. We'll talk soon.

Emily (58:19)
It always is. It's always really cool. Thanks, Megan

Megan (58:28)
If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to follow or subscribe to the Quilt Scouts podcast so you don't miss future episodes. And if you have a minute, leaving a review is one of the best ways to help this podcast find other quilters who could use a little creativity and community too. You can find show notes and more from Quilt Scouts at quiltscouts.com. Until next time, happy trails scout.