ON THE DAY of our visit, the Acadian Culture Center in Eunice, Louisiana, had a gorgeous display of Cajun quilts. Many were more elaborate, but this small, simple, geometric block struck my fancy.
Being of a certain age and of a pre-electrification upbringing, I remember well when women, my grandmother Rosa Hancock among them, regularly quilted.
She learned from her mother. Part of it was mechanical: how to cut and stitch bits of cloth into a patterned cover, then how to sew the quilt sandwich -- cover, batting, and back -- into one smooth, sturdy assemblage. Another part was aesthetic. Patterns were passed through the generations. Elaborate rules dictated how the bits of cloth were cut and laid out, and woe to the quilter who ignored the rules, took shortcuts, or used wide or inconsistent stitches.
Quilting today is less organic than it was back then. Now it's a craft, often learned from books, and often to produce works for display. Back then, quilting was strictly utilitarian; the family -- and families were large back then -- needed warm bed coverings; this was how to make them. The quality and artistry were extra, a hardwon expression of the mother's sense of design and fierce dignity, pride, and love.
Until her death, my grandmother collected bits of cloth. No old shirt or dress was ever thrown away; it was cut into pieces and saved. In the old days, manufacturers goosed sales by packing sugar, flour, even chicken feed, into study printed fabric bags that could later be added to the a quilter's cache.
I praise my grandmother for her beautiful quilts -- one of which will cover me tonight -- and for the years of hard work, dedication to her family, and pure artistry her quilts symbolize and represent.
It was a joy, really, to see that the Cajuns represented by the culture center in Eunice were just as fortunate in their selection of grandmothers as I was.
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