Quilts: Unfolding personal and public histories in South Africa and the United States

Quilts and related textiles are a particularly capacious textile medium through which the intersection of materiality and narratives can be explored. There are thousands of extant historical examples to be found in public and private collections, and the “quilt world” of the early twenty-first century is robust and enormous. There are literally millions of individuals around the globe who are involved in some aspect of quilt production, preservation, and study. This article provides a brief overview of quiltmaking and quilt studies in the United States and in South Africa. It draws upon samples of work from both countries to illustrate how, through their needles and their stories, quilt artists provide unique windows into personal and public histories. The improvisational patchwork here is meant to remind one of graffiti scrawled impulsively on a wall in the shadows. Hand-quilting in winding trails of various reds invokes brick and blood … this one is for Eric Garner who was killed in a chokehold by NYPD [New York Police Department] officer Daniel Pantaleo on July 17, 2014 on Staten Island. His suspected crime was selling loose cigarettes on a street corner. Recorded in a viral video on a smart phone, these were Eric’s last words. For me, these words are filled with meaning beyond the incident (Kimber cited by Hlohowskyj 2017).


Introduction
Quilts and related textiles are a particularly capacious textile medium through which the intersection of materiality and narratives can be explored. There are thousands of extant historical examples to be found in public and private collections, and the "quilt world" of the early twenty-first century is robust and enormous. There are literally millions of individuals around the globe who are involved in some aspect of quilt production, preservation, and study. In this article I provide a brief overview of quiltmaking and quilt studies in the United States and in South Africa. I then draw upon samples of work from both countries to illustrate how, through their needles and their stories, quilt artists provide unique windows into personal and public histories. 1 Reading women's history through quilts Material objects are critical to our understanding of humankind; studies of cloth, one of the oldest and most fundamental aspects of our material world, are key to investigating the development of civilisation (see Barber 1994;Livingstone & Ploof 2007;Weiner & Schneider 1989;Gordon 2019). The study of textiles was historically hampered by several factors. First, as an often perishable material object, textiles of ancient times simply no longer exist, except as depicted in other art forms or as fragments found in archaeological excavations. Second, the production of textiles is overwhelmingly considered women's work and situated in domestic life, realms that were of little interest for interrogation by scholars until the rise of feminist studies in the latter part of the twentieth century. Feminist art historian Rozsika Parker, in the foreword to her influential book The Subversive Stitch on one such domestic art -embroidery -stated simply how essential the investigation of textiles is to understanding women's lives, 'to know the history of embroidery is to know the history of women' (Parker 1984:[sp]). Within the context of studies of material culture, especially that of women, the examination of the intersection of narratives and cloth offers special opportunities to illuminate history. As Maureen Daly Goggin (2009:1), suggests, a scholar who specialises in theorising and historicising praxis of material culture, a focus on women and material culture, particularly on textiles, enables us to understand 'just how deeply the needle has pierced social, political, economic, ethnic, and cultural facets of humanity'. Yet, as Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laura Thatcher Ulrich (1990:202) observes, 'there is a creative tension between pens and needles, hands and tongues, written and non-written forms of female expression, inviting us not only to take oral traditions and material sources more seriously … but also to examine the roots of the written documents we take so much for granted'. Ulrich advocates that scholars not only examine the textiles themselves but also to use the textiles as a springboard for investigations into all that is associated in the making and using of them. page 03 of 24 Number 34, 2020 ISSN 2617-3255 In this article, I argue that quilts intimately intersect with the study of materiality and narratives. Certainly, as an object, a quilt has materiality. It can, through standard material culture object analysis, be described in terms of design elements (in other words, colour, texture, pattern, embellishment, and so on) and its physical structure (types of fabrics and construction techniques used, size, condition, and so on). Although they sometimes do, the majority of quilts do not contain words, phrases, and/or passages of text. The connection of these textiles to narratives -in other words, personal and collective life experiences, beliefs, observations, or creative ideas -might at least partially be revealed by clues derived through object analysis. And, within the stories of the making and use of the quilt, the relevance and importance of the object to human experience can be even more fully revealed. Early feminist South African author, Olive Schreiner, whose fiction contained references to embroidery and patchwork, likewise recognises textiles as both art and text. 'The poet, when his heart is weighted, writes a sonnet, and the painter paints a picture, and the thinker throws himself into the world of action; but the woman is only a woman, what has she but her needle? ... Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?' (Schreiner 1982:187).
Though Schreiner, Ferrero, Hedges and Silber speak of these textiles as accounts of women's experiences in the past, the importance of being able to "see" and "understand" the texts afforded by textiles is equally true with contemporary textiles. And, unlike the painstaking and sometimes impossible work of trying to reconstruct histories through the fragments of extant textiles made by anonymous makers, today's researchers often have the advantage of not only seeing the entire textile but, more importantly, being able to have direct access to the maker's stories of the making and meaning of their work.
As scholar and textile artist Rachel May (2018)  work by women today'. Feminist art historian, Rozsika Parker (1984:14-15), in referencing Schreiner's quest to have textiles, particularly embroidery, valued as art, stated that Schreiner 'also perceived the bond that embroidery forged between women; sewing allowed women to sit together without feeling they were neglecting their families, wasting time, or betraying their husbands by maintaining independent social bonds'. Through interrogation of textiles as texts, the social bonds between women, between makers and their communities, can be revealed and the contexts in which narratives are presented materially can be better understood.
Quiltmaking in the United States and South Africa: a brief overview Quiltmaking is an art form that can be found in communities and cultures around the world, but it has been a particularly strong material culture tradition in northern Europe and in those countries -such as the United States and South Africa -which share Although it is likely that the Dutch and French brought quilts with them as they settled in South Africa as early as the 1600s, the earliest known examples of quilts in the colonial era appear to be affiliated with the British and Irish, who immigrated to South Africa when the diamond and mining industries were established. Recently, a quilt dated as early as circa 1805 has been identified (Havenga 2020). As Indian immigrants to South Africa introduced their textile traditions into the cultural mix, their patched and appliquéd bedcovers were, and are still, used in some homes (Areington 2015). Even though in the twentieth century interest in quiltmaking was exploding in the United States and other page 05 of 24 Number 34, 2020 ISSN 2617-3255 parts of the world, the development of quilting in South Africa was slower owing to several factors, including that it was an art form affiliated with a minority population. As quilt history publications, how-to books and periodicals, exhibitions, and even television and radio shows devoted to quilts proliferated elsewhere, particularly in the United States, these resources were seldom produced in or found their way to South Africa until the new democratic government was established in 1994. The end of apartheid, the opening up of communication channels and travel, and the establishment of the internet enabled South Africans to access new materials and information about quiltmaking worldwide.
While the engagement of individuals in the art of making quilts has a long and expanding history, it should be noted that this engagement, particularly in South Africa, has been conditioned by economic and racial factors. First, since the art form is associated with a colonial rather than an indigenous heritage, quiltmaking in South Africa gained enormous popularity within predominately populations of South Africans of European, and specifically British, descent. Secondly, the costs associated with quilting also limited engagement.
For even though quilts can be made with recycled fabric and tools consisting only of thread and a needle, the new era of quiltmaking promoted production of work made of new fabrics, even cloth made especially for quilts. Sewing machine manufacturers continually produce machines that incorporate increasingly sophisticated computer programming and are accordingly more expensive. The purchase of new cloth and such technologically advanced machines rendered the making of quilts financially out of reach for many.
Two groups of fibre artists in South Africa have been driving forces in the expansion of interest in the making and appreciation of quiltmaking. The South African Quilters' Guild, whose membership of over 5000 largely comprises white South Africans, was founded in 1989, and has twelve affiliated regional guilds. Members stage major regional and national exhibitions, offer instructional workshops -especially in informal communities -maintain website resources, and conduct studies and documentation of historical quilts. in making quilts and related textiles. Led by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious and service organisations, artist-activists, and governmental agencies, these initiatives aimed to tap women's traditional skills, especially in sewing and beadwork, to develop marketable products for income generation for the artists. Most quilts made around the world were intended for use as bedding and thus the majority of this output has simply been "used up". Many though have been preserved, especially when they represented a family heirloom passed down from one generation to the next; these textiles -often accompanied by a family story -are tangible evidence of the lived experiences and the creativity of forbears. Quilts intentionally made as art, such as those done by countless textile artists in the United States and South Africa, are treasured for both the visual statements they make and the stories they convey.

Quilt documentation and study
Quilt studies began to come of age in the mid-to late-twentieth century, and by the end Yet, the vast amount of data on their materiality and their associated narratives was ripe for analysis through multiple disciplinary lenses and through critical theories, such as thing theory, care theory, feminist theory, and literary theory. Quilts and their stories were embraced as part of thematic or area studies of health, feminism, gender, race, ethnicity, occupation, religion, and sociology.
Systematic documentation of quilts held in private and public collections began in the late-twentieth century in the United States, when grassroots citizen scholars joined with academic scholars and staff at museums, libraries, and archives to organise quilt documentation projects across regions (in other words, counties, states, provinces, and nations). Images, stories, and technical data on tens of thousands of quilts, along with biographical data about their makers and their social histories have been gathered. It has been estimated that the local, state, and regional quilt documentation projects begun in the 1980s have already registered data on over several hundred thousands of historical quilts in the United States (see Christopherson 1995;Zegart & Holstein 1993;Zegart 1996). In the early 1990s, members of the South African Quilters' Guild began documenting quilts made prior to 1960 that were held in museums and private collections; Voortrekker quilts (lappies komberse) and kappies (bonnets with extensive quilting on the rims) were of special interest to the guild researchers (Kirk [sa]). The Quilt Index (www. quiltindex.org), a freely-accessible online digital humanities resource, serves as the home for over 80 000 records from some of those projects, as well as data from other research projects and private and public collections, including hundreds of museums. As of 2020,  (Figure 1a & Figure 1b).
Little is also known about the origins of an appliquéd and embroidered bedcover acquired   apartheid and human rights. During the anti-apartheid movement, Kriel (2017) states that she was spending her free time in meetings, marches, and defiantly organising resistance, [a]lthough I studied painting, I had no time in those years for the isolation of studio painting. But I needed to be creative so I put together a little suitcase with materials for embroidery and carried it with me to the meetings. Whatever was discussed in these meetings, was stitched into the cloth. Needle and thread became the medium through which history was interpreted and communicated. Every stitch was dedicated to those who lost their lives in their struggle for justice.
In the centre of this piece (Figure 5 Kimber has placed her quilt within an African American aesthetic context. Her description of the intentional use of red threads to invoke blood and bricks helps us to link this object more closely with police and urban violence against African Americans. Her reference to graffiti calls out a subversive practice that is most often carried out by those who do not have access to officially sanctioned forms of public expression or who are excluded from the art world. Quilts, like graffiti, have been, until relatively recently, expressive art forms that have been largely marginalised by art scholars. Kimber's quilt could be seen as placing the proverbial writing on the wall; Kimber merges the expressive art forms of graffiti and textiles. Kimber speaks of the improvisational nature of the patchwork and that this improvisation is meant to convey the sense of something that emerges from a place of impulse, a place of feeling rather than something carefully pre-meditated, and also as something that occurs in the shadows. Both quilts and graffiti are produced in the shadows. Quilts are typically made in the private spaces of home or studio; graffiti is done publicly but clandestinely, often in the cover of night darkness. 5 In other recorded narratives, Kimber also ties her work to the histories of her own families,  combined the name Tutu with the word ubuntu, a Nguni word that roughly means "human kindness" (Figure 9). Vandeyar shares that,

A closing note
The examples highlighted above clearly support the ways in which quilts and related textiles both materially and with their associated stories -especially those gleaned from the makers themselves -are critical resources for understanding the human experience.
When Olive Schreiner (1982:IX) asked, '[h]as the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?', she must have been acutely aware of the many, many individuals in her family and in her community who used thread, needle, and fabric to not only serve domestic needs, but also to serve as touchstones and conveyors of the lived life of the textile's makers and users. It is essential that we interrogate and understand how these objects and their stories are part of human interactions, not only within and at the time of the contexts of their original making, but also why and how their material messages continue to have resonance and meaning.
Fiber artist and writer Maria Hlohowskyj, observes that Chawne Kimber 'often writes about the power that we give to or take away from language. We can give or take power from quilts, too, and more often than not we have dismissed them as feminine, domestic items with little to say. Like her South African counterparts in textile storytelling, Kimber is taking back that power, one stitch at a time' (Hlohowskyj 2017). As more quilts are documented and analysed and as more quilt history is investigated, documented and analysed, we will, without a doubt, understand that quilts and related textiles have, indeed, much to say.

Notes
1. The author wishes to thank the reviewers of this manuscript for their close reading and excellent suggestions which have immensely strengthened this article.
2. For the best historical published references to patchwork and quiltmaking in South Africa, see JC Pretorius (1992).
3. Pinking refers to the process of cutting a textile with pinking scissors, the blades of which are sawtoothed instead of straight. When used to cut materials, it leaves a zigzag rather than a straight edge.
4. The English paper piecing technique consists of stabilising fabric around a paper shape, usually a hexagon, before sewing the pieces together to create an overall design.
5. The author wishes to especially thank the anonymous reviewer for her insightful suggestions regarding graffiti.
6. Images and texts of the memory cloths can be accessed in Reclaiming Heritage: A Living Archive, available online at https://www.amazwi-voicesofwomen.com/archives.