Quilters' works share a common thread

Like quilters anywhere, members of the group called Sisters in Stitches Joined by the Cloth -- the only African-American quilting guild in New England -- are first and foremost fabric addicts.

''I have a 28-by-26-foot quilt studio with enough fabric in it to dress every African in the world," quips member Jeannette Spencer, a nurse who lives in Weymouth.

They also indulge in all kinds of fanatical ''crazy stuff," says member Michelle Harrell, such as sending emergency e-mails to one another when someone spots a killer fabric, going on group shopping expeditions, taking field trips to quilt shows. The Sisters were among the first in line to see the ''Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibition of African-American quilts now at the Museum of Fine Arts. ''It's all part of the joy of quilting," says Harrell, a professor of early childhood education at Roxbury Community College.

But members of this group, formed in 1997, say they have a special bond that goes beyond their love of piecing together fabric to make textile art and their shared interest in ethnic fabrics and designs.

''It's important for me to be around black quilters," says Christle Rawlins-Jackson, a Roxbury visual artist. ''I think we see things differently, based on our culture and heritage and ancestry."

Quilt making has a long and rich history in the African-American community, although only recently has it started to be documented. Part of this history has been illuminated by the Gee's Bend show at the MFA, which highlights the work of several generations of quilters from a poor, isolated community in Alabama. Their striking quilts -- made primarily for warmth, not for decoration -- were pieced together from old clothes, feed bags, and any other scraps the women could find.

But these so-called utilitarian quilts from the South, with improvised designs, are only one aspect of the history of African-American quilt making, says Carolyn Mazloomi, founder of the 1,700-member Women of Color Quilters Network, based in West Chester, Ohio. Mazloomi, an aerospace engineer, quilter, and quilting scholar, said that ever since African women were brought to this country, many with needlework skills, the styles and techniques of African-American quilts have changed every 50 years or so.

There have been quilts that reflect a European tradition made by slave women on plantations who sewed for their mistresses, in the mistresses' style, with even stitching and squared corners, she says. There were quilts made in the ''narrative" style, with appliqued figures that tell a pictorial story. One of the most famous of this genre, made in the 1890s by Harriet Powers, a Georgia slave, is in the permanent collection of the MFA; it depicts biblical scenes, local legends, and natural phenomena, such as a meteor shower in 1833.

''We loooooove narrative quilts," says Mazloomi. ''African-American people were not allowed to read and write when they came here as slaves, so it's one of the ways a needlewoman told her stories."

Some quilters believe that African-Americans also made quilts containing patterns that were actually encoded messages guiding those escaping along the Underground Railroad.

But Mazloomi believes there was a ''huge gap" in African-American quilt making from the time African-Americans were freed from slavery until the 1960s and 1970s. ''After slavery and the migration north, African-Americans worked and were able to buy store-bought blankets and no one wanted to quilt," she says. ''I have met so many older African-Americans who haven't quilted for decades and told me that at one point they had to make quilts but they can't stand it now, and they got tired of quilting. It was work."

But with the Black Power movement came renewed interest and pride in art forms such as quilting. ''Young blacks wanted to learn more about their roots, and they started going to historical museums as well as art museums, and they got information about African-American quilting," Mazloomi says. But even as the quilting industry has exploded in this country recently -- it's grown by 50 percent since 1997, to over 21 million quilters -- Mazloomi says African-Americans form only a ''minute fraction" of the American quilting population.

''Within the scope of the canvas of American quilt making, African-Americans form a tiny little section of quilt making," she says. ''It is still a matter of educating people within the culture."

Which partly explains why Sisters in Stitches was formed. Jeannette Spencer, the group's first president, said she helped found the group so that she could meet other African-American quilters. ''I was involved with organized quilt groups. I visited a lot of quilt shows. I knew in my heart there were a lot of African-Americans who quilted and had done this for generations," says Spencer. ''But why weren't they out there?"

Part of the reason, she believes, is the high cost of quilting. In the past, ''the cost of fabrics was so prohibitive. You can see from the Gee's Bend show that these women used [scraps of] fabric, and that was true of a lot of quilters when we started quilting in America. Most African-American women today are able to shop and spend like everyone else -- but we are still not out there organizationally."

Finding members for this group was tricky, at first. Quilter Mildred Maines, a Randolph banker, resorted to scouting for them at fabric stores. That was how she found Melody Faye Rose of Quincy, who is still amused at Maines' audacity.

''I didn't know her from a hole in the ground," recalls Rose.

''I recruit quite a few women that way," laughs Maines. ''I wouldn't go up to them on the street. But [Mildred] was looking at quilting fabrics. She looked like someone who would be real interested."

The group now has nearly three-dozen members, drawing on women from as far as Worcester and Springfield. They meet once a month at St. John's Episcopal Church in Holbrook, sharing ideas, projects, and insider tips on fabric sources; although not all the women design quilts with ethnic themes, many use fabrics and materials that either come from Africa or are African designs manufactured in the United States or Europe. Meetings are informal; ''it's more like a quilting bee," says Spencer. ''The first meeting I happened to be late, as usual, so they made me president." Several of the women have had work in exhibitions, and recently participated in a demonstration at the MFA, held in conjunction with the opening of the Gee's Bend show.

Women range in age from their 30s to their 70s, and they work in a range of styles, as evidenced by the group's most recent exhibition, which was held at the Gallery at the Piano Factory in Boston's South End. Michele David, a physician from Chestnut Hill, displayed a quilt using color and symbolism related to her upbringing in Haiti. Susi Ryan, the current president of the group and a Worcester day-care provider, quilted a figure of an African woman based on a design by her daughter. Christle Rawlins-Jackson, a graphic artist, incorporated photographs of her family and a plaster cast of her mother's face. ''I wanted to honor my ancestors," she says. ''If you don't know your past, how can you go forward?"

''We are not just one experience," says Jacquie Anderson-Wilson of Burlington, who was born in Jamaica and grew up in Canada.

''Anybody and everybody can use African imagery and material; it's not necessarily unique to us," she says. ''It's the experience a group of black women share in terms of the history of being black women, and that history bonds us."

Sisters in Stitches Joined at the Cloth meets the third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church in Holbrook. For information, contact Jeannette Spencer, 508-472-8822.On Sunday, July 17, quilter L'Merchie Frazier, director of education at Boston's Museum of Afro American History, will lecture on African-American quilting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 465 Huntington Ave., at 1 and 3 p.m., in the Riley Seminar Room. Free. For information, call 617-369-3300 or visit www.mfa.org.