Photo by Evan Anderson
Georgia Bonesteel became the founding president of the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild by happenstance.
The year was 1972, and she had just moved from New Orleans to Hendersonville. When word got around that Bonesteel was a seamstress, a neighbor came running down Estate Drive, breathlessly explaining that she was leaving town and needed someone to finish teaching her sewing class at Blue Ridge Community College (then Blue Ridge Technical College).
“So, I did,” Bonesteel remembers. The next year, she taught another sewing class. And the next year, she did the same. But in 1975, Bonesteel taught something different: an 11-week course on the fundamentals of quilting. The class, which culminated in a public quilt show of sorts, was so well received that it became a staple offering at the college.
Quilting today runs the gamut between abstract and traditional designs.
Photo by Evan Anderson
“As I continued to teach, my classes grew and the idea for a guild was born,” says Bonesteel, a well-known author who also hosted a popular PBS show on the subject.
In 1982, 40 years ago this year, the inaugural meeting of the WNC Quilters Guild was held at St. James Episcopal Church. Bonesteel was elected president, Jeanne Novak secretary, and Ruth Eaton treasurer.
“A lot has changed since then,” Eaton says, reflecting on the Guild’s 40th anniversary. Namely, the group has grown to include 150 members of all skill levels. But beyond the Guild, the quilting world at large has experienced fairly radical changes.
When Eaton first took a quilting class with Bonesteel in 1980, she didn’t perceive textile work as an art form. “If I had, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up,” Eaton says, recalling a time in the third grade when a teacher gruffly told her she was “terribly bad at art.” In the decades to follow, Eaton eschewed drawing and painting for sewing, convinced that making blankets and clothes was a utilitarian pursuit, not a creative one.
But sometime between then and today, the dichotomy of art and craft has blurred. Whereas the quilts of yesteryear focused on practicality, quilts in the 21st century either balance form and function or are made solely to hang up, never to huddle beneath.
“People once made quilts so they could keep warm,” says Eaton simply. “Now, there’s a whole different idea about what a quilt is and isn’t.”
Bonesteel explains that when the Guild hosted its first quilt show at The Cedars in 1982, all the submissions featured very traditional blocks and patterns. “If you go to a quilt show today, there are still some very utilitarian quilts that are made for the bed,” she remarks. “But there are also the art quilts, which emphasize design — not necessarily functionality.” These include abstract compositions, figurative scenes, wild color motifs, and surfaces embellished with other media forms.
The demographics of quilting are shifting, too. More textile artists of different genders, races, and ages are picking up a needle and changing the culture of sewing, block by block. Though the Guild’s membership is still fairly homogenous — “there’s mostly gray hair,” Bonesteel laughs — efforts are being made to attract a more diverse group.
“We encourage people to join,” says Bonesteel. “We want our field to stay active and strong. We don’t want it to pass away with this generation.”
In honor of its 40th anniversary, the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild will present its 2022 “A Garden of Quilts” juried show on Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21, at the Youth Activities Building in the Bonclarken Conference Center (5 Pine Drive, Flat Rock, bonclarken.org). Show hours are 10am-5pm on Friday and 10am-4pm on Saturday. Admission is $5; parking is free. For more information, visit westernncquilters.org.