March 23-March 24 2007 Southern Quilt Conference
Louisiana Tech University hosted the 2007 Southern Quilt Conference on March 23-24 in Ruston, Louisiana. The conference theme was "Southern Cultures, Southern Quilts."
The conference was sponsored by The Deep South Quilt Study Group and the Louisiana Regional Folklife Program, in the English Department at Louisiana Tech University, and was partially supported by a grant from the Louisiana State Arts Council through the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Regional co-chairs were Laurel Horton, Gaye Ingram, and Kathy Moore. Local arrangement chairs were Martha Gilbert, Gaye Ingram, and Susan Roach, assisted by Pat Kyser and Carla Rowley. Knowing the value of many voices and varied viewpoints, the organizers hoped this conference would attract students of quilt history from across the South and nation.
Southern quilts reflect the complex interplay of the larger question of southern identity. Is the South, as some scholars suggest, “an imagined geography,” or is there a “cultural coherence” that gives southerners a sense of commonality? This conference offered a forum for examining the scope and meaning of southern quilts through the presentation and discussion of current scholarly research.
Papers and presentations explored the development of quilting design and production from colonial to contemporary eras, the dissemination of quilt patterns and techniques, materials used over time, as well as the cultural and aesthetic influences that shaped quilt design and usage in the Deep South.
Keynote speaker was Laurel Horton, internationally known quilt scholar and author of Mary Black’s Quilts: Memory and Meaning in Everyday Life, who will address the question “What We Know about Southern Quilts and What We Think We Know.” The two-day event also included the following speakers and topics: Fawn Valentine, author of West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers, “Discovering an Aesthetic: Scotch-Irish Quilts in West Virginia”; Tereza Oleinick, Associate Professor of Theater at Auburn University, “The Stitches of Gee’s Bend and the Southern Stitching Style”; Susan Roach, Professor of English at Louisiana Tech University, Folklorist for the Louisiana Regional Folklife Program, "Re-presenting the Quilts of African Americans in the South"; and Jenna Tedrick Kuttruff, Professor of Textiles at Louisiana State University, "Acadian Cotonnade Quilts: Adding Pieces to a Puzzle." Debra Faircloth, owner of a large collection of quilts made by her grandmother Hilda Gentry between 1920 and 2003, joined Laurel Horton in a discussion of research and publication procedures: “Formulating a Research Project: A Conversation about the Goals, Methods, and Resources for Quilt Research and Publication.” Nancilu Burdick, author of Legacy: The Quilts of Talula Gilbert Bottoms and Family Ties, shared a segment of a PBS film made about the quilts of her grandmother, Talula Bottoms.
In addition, the following presented their research-in-progress: Lynn Gorges, “North Carolina Textile Mills and Alamance Plaids”; Ronda McAllen, “Jewish Baltimore Album Quilts and Ongoing Research in Jewish Quiltmaking in America”; Gaye Ingram, with Carolyn Miller, “Whig’s Defeat: The Origins and Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Political Quilt Pattern”: Ruth Rhoads, "Feedsacks in Georgia: Their Manufacture, Marketing, and Consumer Use"; and Marcia Kaylakie, author of a forthcoming book on Texas quilts and quiltmakers, “Rattlesnake Quilts: Tracing a Southern Pattern.” A “Show and Tell, Show and Ask” session concluded the conference Saturday afternoon.
The conference ran from Friday, at 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30-5 p.m. at the Thomas Assembly Center, Hall of Fame Room. Conference organizers dedicated the event to Bets Ramsey, acknowledging the wealth of scholarship produced as a consequence of her Southern Quilt Consortium as well as by her published research on Southern quiltmaking. Ramsey is the doyen of Southern quilt scholarship, generous beyond reason, and she learns as gladly as she teaches.
Click here for a trifold brochure.
