QUILT SHOWCASE Fine threads of history

By ASHLEY POWERS
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
HIN TUCKED, BLUE EYES steeled ahead, Cindy Junkin purses her mouth into a thin line. Her sewing machine speaks for her.
The tale it whirs is of a music therapist, slicing fabric in a quilting class at the Jo-Ann Etc. store in Boardman on a rainy Friday night. The instructor's lecture is borders and edges -- the endings to the narrative that is quilting.
Junkin's husband, John, is a retired phone man, 32 years with various Bell companies, then Verizon. Antique phones dot the hunter green and cool beige pattern of the covering she sews for his leather chair; telephone poles will drape its back.
It's meant as a Father's Day surprise. But, as quilts have been for ages, Junkin's is something more: a story to snuggle with, a sort of tangible fable. "Something the grandkids could pull out," she says.
Something to leave behind.
Hers is simply a modern version of the needlework that scripts the nation's history. Cultures have always been bound and stored in their heirlooms, experts and quilters say. Our annals are painted and sculpted and penned. But they are also stitched.
Quilting exhibit
This summer, Ohio will unfurl a bicentennial's worth of bedding around the state. Columbus is hosting a national showcase of quilts expected to draw thousands. By sheer numbers, the exhibits should turn a spotlight on an art form often linked to the days of log cabins -- even though quilting has outlived them.
Ricky Clark, a quilt historian, unearthed the tales of 7,000 or so quilts for "Quilts in Community: Ohio's Traditions," a book she co-authored. One quilt portrays pop culture, circa 1887, through the lens of Lodi, in Medina County -- think Santa Claus and Jumbo the Elephant. Another, from 1891, foreshadows modern fund raising: Blocks on a quilt made in Amboy, in Ashtabula County, list their donors and their donations. The quilt brought in $283 to rebuild church pews with its 1,176 inscriptions.
"These were not made because the person had 15 kids and had to keep warm," says Clark, who works with Oberlin College and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These quilts cemented communities. When East Coast immigrants moved west -- to Ohio -- they brought their quilting patterns with them, Clark said. Not until the mid-1800s, when agricultural fairs seeded remote towns with patterns, were quilts thrown into the melting pot. As newcomers assimilated, so did their style of sewing.
Quilts embodied a rustic America the Quaint -- so much that their popularity soared during the Depression. "It made everybody look back to a world that didn't really exist," Clark says. "Quilts were old and made them feel good about things."
They remain metaphors for hearth and home. The Columbus suburb of Worthington, for example, capped its 200th birthday with a quilted hodgepodge of local lore, including a covered wagon and the town sign.
Even art quilts, the flashy cousins of traditional patterns -- crafted like paintings or carved in wood -- spring from the artists' environs. Such as the Connecticut woman who, after Sept. 11, 2001, quilted swaths of a shirt showing New York City buildings. Or the quilt that hung in the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University, patched with grief: the names of area AIDS victims.
Creating keepsakes
The common thread is legacy. A quilt will likely last longer than its subject -- or its maker. "I think that's why quilters try to be perfect," says Sandy Keifer, 55, who teaches the quilting class at Jo-Ann Etc. and owns a porcelain studio in Columbiana. "They think it's going to be around forever, and they're gone and people will see their mistakes."
So she gently guides Junkin, 49, of Bessemer, Pa., as her machine hums along. Junkin and her sister-in-law stumbled into quilting after finding one John's grandmother had made in 1959. It had been washed too much, in water too hot, and nearly destroyed. This is her way of mending the tear in family history.
Speaking from her home in Salem, Janice Seidner understands. Seidner cherishes a quilt from her mother that looks like a flower garden. She has quilts for each month -- June's is purple and lavender. There's a quilt with blocks that represent eight states where her children have lived.
Seidner, 67, always made quilts for her kids, including Leslie. In August, she gave an older one to Leslie's godchild, then 10. Cancer had just captured Leslie; Seidner hoped Emily could cradle her memories in the creation -- bright yellow, vibrant, full of life.
She handed the quilt to Emily's mother, who was Leslie's friend. The woman began to weep.
"To always remember Leslie," Seidner had said. "Always."