Thousands of quilters gathered in Rosemont for the International Quilt Festival, one of the biggest in the Midwest. (Cindy Dampier / Chicago Tribune)

Mary Fons sat up in bed, mind racing. She was in her late 20s, barely married, but headed toward divorce. She was sick — a horrific disease, ulcerative colitis, had nearly taken her life and left her body badly broken. She was alone in the dark, scared, but suddenly she realized what she needed. She needed to make a quilt.

"When life as you know it is torn into a million pieces," she says, "It makes perfect sense to tear up perfectly good fabric into a million pieces and sew it back together again."


Chawne Kimber's pain and frustration were more than she could contain. Racist graffiti had appeared at her workplace — not once, but repeatedly — yet the response was muffled, at best, and she was unable to speak out. Raised in a Southern family with a history that extends through slavery, she reached out for a remedy that ties her to her ancestry: She went to her sewing machine, stitched a quilt with a racial epithet emblazoned across it, and wrapped herself in it.

"That was my way of saying, 'Look, this is what you think I am.'" she says. "No matter how I wrap the quilt around myself you can't cover up the word, it's always going to be there. It was a way of responding to this."

Jacquie Gering's husband, a Chicago Public Schools administrator, was starting to worry her. The couple were both lifelong educators, passionate about their work in city schools. But she could see the stress was crushing him. "You have to talk to me," she told him, and the agony of facing constant paperwork that listed students who were victims of violence poured out. "These kids die," she says, "and it doesn't even make the news." She comforted her husband, then turned her own feelings about the loss of young lives into a quilt. With a giant gun on it. She called it "Bang, You're Dead."

Quilts may be the closest thing we have to a universal symbol for comfort. Whether you curl up under them or spend long, meditative hours making them, they're a salve for the soul. Yet, lately, they're making some people uneasy.

Though there is a long, worldwide tradition of political and social justice speech in quilts, work like Kimber's and Gering's, passed quickly and continuously from hand to hand via social media, has provoked a renewed surge in message-bearing quilts — and a counter surge of disapproval from other quilters who believe that issues like these have no place in the sewing circle. The quilt world (which in America includes more than 16 million quilt-makers whose buying power supports a nearly $4 billion per year industry) is enduring a sort of schism, buffeted as we all are by changing times, a climate of unrest and the vicious mosh pit of social media. This weekend, thousands of quilters will gather in Rosemont for the International Quilt Festival, one of the biggest in the Midwest. They'll be ogling quilts, and eyeing fabric, and generally geeking out. And they may also be confronting their issues.

"The quilt world is a subculture," says Fons, "and it really is a microcosm, too."

She is uniquely qualified to assess the current controversy: The daughter of famed quilter Marianne Fons, Mary Fons grew up in the quilting universe, knows it inside and out. While her mother authored books on quilting, launched a PBS show on quilts and toured the country doing quilting events, Fons and her two sisters were home in Winterset, Iowa, being cared for by, who else, quilters.

"Women who were in mom's quilt guild would come and stay with us, cook for us, take care of us for maybe a week at a time," she says. Many of those quilters, she knows, might find themselves on the traditionalists' side of the quilt controversy. "But I love them and they raised me. And they're good people."

Fons believes this, in part, because, in addition to her work as a freelance writer and actor, she has spent nearly the past decade in the professional quilting arena, becoming a co-host on her mother's TV show, lecturing and teaching, and writing her own quilting books. And she had to make her peace with the stricter segments of the quilting population long ago. "I didn't know what I was doing with quilting at first," she says. In truth, she had never really learned to sew. "I learned to make quilts on national television. I was a beginner in front of millions of people. And so there were people who did not like that I was this rookie."

Jacquie Gering's quilt "Bang You're Dead" was created in response to the effect of gun violence on Chicago's children.
Jacquie Gering's quilt "Bang You're Dead" was created in response to the effect of gun violence on Chicago's children. (Gregory Case)

She tried to avoid online comments to keep the backlash at bay. But "every once in awhile, I'd see some pocket of hate on Facebook: 'I can't stand that nitwit daughter.' 'She moves her hands too much, she's unwatchable.'" It was painful, and she hasn't forgotten — she still makes it a point to promote the idea of being accepting of other quilters, especially newbies. But she worked hard to prove herself and "over the years," she says, "they warmed up."

Fons understands old guard quilters, in the familiar way a small-town kid carries a sense of her hometown with her, no matter how immersed in the city she becomes. "The people who are purists," she says, "they mean well. They don't want things to be lost, they don't want tradition to be forgotten. Because it's sacred, man. So you've got to do it right, 'no no no you can't do it that way.'" The "quilt police" as Fons calls "anybody who tells you you can't do whatever it is you're doing" have definitely caused uproar in the quilting community in the past. In 1988, a quilt made using a sewing machine rather than hand stitching won the grand prize at the International Quilt Association show, the nation's largest, for the first time. Quilters were outraged. "My mother was there," says Fons, "and she told me she saw women sitting on the curb, crying. Because it was cheating, you see." (Note to the hard-line hand quilters: The sewing machine was invented sometime in the 18th century. Doesn't get much more old school than that.) "Any quilter from 1910 would climb over her grandma to get to my sewing machine," says Fons. "But the technology thing goes right to the heart of the issue, because it's the same thing with the political quilts."

Of course, insistent efforts to preserve the purity of tradition — any tradition — are likely to be false anyway. History rarely upholds the idea that there is one true way to do things. "A lot of people think that quilt activism is very new," says Gering, one of the founders of the nationwide Modern Quilt Guild. "They hear the word quilt and they think, 'Oh, my grandma made quilts.' So people think that the activism is new and in fact, it has a long and rich history."

American women have always used quilts to talk about political leanings (one candidate they supported ... John Quincy Adams) and social reform (including causes such as abolition of slavery, or Prohibition.) It makes sense, says Laura McDowell Hopper, curator at Northern Illinois University's Pick Museum of Anthropology in DeKalb: "For a long time, women were disenfranchised, not able to vote, represent themselves, have their voices heard. But women are really resourceful, so we'll find ways to represent our hopes and wishes. If you don't have a physical seat at the table, you do what you can, and maybe that is to make a quilt."


Sewing a quilt, it turns out, has been a radical act for a very long time. "I think it kind of dishonors that history," says Hopper, who is working on the "Quilts and Human Rights" exhibit that will open at the Pick in September, "to tell people they can't make quilts that address those issues."


"Look," says Fons, who supports protest quilts even though her own quilts aren't message-oriented, "we've worked really hard to be able to put a gun on our quilts."

Still, the backlash rarely subsides: In February, the Tucson Quilters Guild presented its annual show, only to receive a raft of complaints and negative comments from attendees who were incensed that two issue-based quilts (one anti-Trump, and one addressing the separation of immigrant mothers and children) were included. "One woman was livid," says show organizer Reilly Zoda. "She was so angry she was shaking." Zoda didn't even consider removing the quilts. "I hadn't really thought about it before, but I realized that I felt very strongly that there is a place for that and if you don't like it you can walk past it." The show also included a historical quilt with an American flag and dove, says Zoda, exasperated: "That's a political quilt, too!"

Just after the Women's March in January, a bright pink quilt made by Californian Darci Read with the words "Women's Rights Are Human Rights" provoked a comment war hundreds of posts deep on Facebook. Angry quilters took sides as an argument over whether political quilts belong on pages usually devoted to less controversial needlecraft.

This feminist quilt, made by quilter Darci Read, set off a comment storm when it appeared on Facebook after the Women's March, with quilters squaring off over political messages on quilts.

When Kimber began making quilts meant to question the use of language and boundaries, she started with a simple idea: George Carlin's well-known "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue. "I posted (the quilt) on my blog and on flickr," she says, "so it was a pretty wide audience that had access to it, and it was just interesting to see the reactions. More than half were very supportive and pretty excited about this because they had never thought of doing it and it made them think about things they could do. But then there was a segment that told me I'm going to hell and ruining the quilt world. Words are mighty, quilts are mighty if they can do that! I wasn't ready for that and I was surprised."

Though she started out making traditional quilts to learn skills, she thought the beautiful specimens she saw at quilt shows "have no soul, because there is no intent beyond 'This is my artistry, these are my skills.'" And in the mainstream quilting world, which still skews demographically white and female, she felt her point of view was missing and wanted to share it. "The subjects that are attacked in these works are not the subjects that interest me. I don't see my issues represented. So I'm trying to fill a niche in that community."

But she isn't trying to anger anyone, she says. "I want to spark a conversation. That's my complete intention. I'm not out to shock anyone but I do want people to think about issues." Reactions to her work, which has included subject matter such as police killings of African-Americans and sexual assault, have run the gamut from personal attacks to honest engagement with the issues. "Sometimes," she says, "people actually tell you things that echo that they understand. Even if they have no experience with those issues."

Reaction to Gering's "Bang" quilt has been ongoing for three years, she says. "It's pretty powerful. And it's interesting, that quilt has had feedback from very positive to very negative. I've heard, 'This does not belong on an object of comfort.'" To that, Gering simply says, "So … no. There's room for both kinds of quilts. And I tell people all the time, if you don't want to look at it, walk away. But the world will never change that way."

She, and other quilters, do believe the world — or at least, the quilting world — can change.

"Change happens slowly," she says. "Talking about issues and being open to discussion, it's that openness and willingness to reach out that's so important." Those conversations, she adds, should definitely include quilting traditionalists. "I think everyone would agree, tradition is our touchstone, it's where we begin with everything, it's that common thread that runs through this community and it's what makes us so strong. When something new comes on the horizon, it's like 'Oh my god we've destroyed the world of quilting!' But over time it's accepted and part of the tradition of the community. That's just part of growing and changing and pushing the envelope. I embrace it."

It's said that making your bed is the ultimate act of optimism. If so, the making of a quilt is optimism times 1,000. "A quilt takes time," says Fons. "A quilt takes effort, and focus. A quilt is an act of love, it really, really is sort of this manifestation of love." And therefore, no matter the message, the good intention, the shared passion is there. It's this idea that Fons holds onto as she travels the country, meeting quilters, and deftly straddling the line between one camp, which has her ideological sympathies, and the other, which has her heart. "I was horrified when Trump won," she says. "But half of the country voted for Trump, and that means half my audience did too. I get to see a side of the country that most of the people in my everyday universe do not see, do not understand. So I'm lucky because I do get to cross the streams a little bit."

And in the company of other quilters, she says, there is comfort to be found, after all. "It's where we all meet in the middle. And that's sort of holy, and maybe that's sort of the problem we are working through: When quilts get so political, it disturbs that place where we come together.

"I think some people feel like we've lost Thanksgiving dinner, let's not lose quilts, too."

There may be a chill in the air, but quilters ought to know how to handle it: When things fall apart, start stitching. "I believe in the quilters," says Fons. "I really believe in us. We're gonna be OK. We have this common love, and we know the power of a quilt."



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