Our submissions period for Blanket Gravity’s first issue is now open! Please share this link with writers and artists in your life. Our team is thrilled to consider the first submissions and, as always, so grateful to you for your support throughout the journey.
My friend Marianne created my daughter’s first baby quilt, a delightfully sunny pattern of bright squares, bordered with a pattern of tiny toys. A first-time quilt owner myself, I grew to deeply appreciate the handcrafted beauty of our quilt, the satisfaction I got looking at the perfectly fitting squares, the joyful pattern I knew was invented for my daughter. The quilt became a personal experience for me. More than a blanket, the quilt made us feel cared for. Marianne’s quilts hold this interactive quality, my eyes scanning from intricate design to bold shape.
I met Marianne in a yearlong fiction writing class, a post-retirement calling for Marianne that followed decades of pioneering quilting education, including authoring multiple books and co-hosting a quilting TV show. When I hear Marianne talk about quilting, I resolve to start quilting.
In her interview, Marianne discusses the way creative work allows you to change focus during emotional problems. “It's kind of like going to a movie where you lose yourself in it,” she says. “You emerge from the darkened theater with added perspective.” I think about the days I’ve dragged my laptop into bed, the minutes typing the closest I’d come to temporarily submerging my pain. Sometimes we are too sick to create; other times, art is all we can manage.
“Quilters face a lot of things together,” says Marianne. And maybe these social connections are possible in all art, or even any shared activity like our workplaces. How different would our mental health look, if we could say, about our different affiliations or hobbies, that we face a lot of things together? This could be another value of art to our mental health, that artists are drawn together by love, for a craft we are all trying to understand.
Photo: Marianne Fons
How did you start quilting?
I was part of the huge revival of interest in quiltmaking that started with the 1976 American Bicentennial. A lot of people don't realize our country has a continuous, long history of quilting. The only gap was from the early 1940s (when women went to work in WWII factories) to the Bicentennial re-interest. In 1977, at age 25, I marched into the Iowa State University Extension office in my small town of Winterset, Iowa, and asked for a beginners class. I wound up making a career for myself, writing many how-to quilting books, teaching for quilt guilds and at conferences all over the U.S. and beyond, owning the most widely circulated quilting magazine, and co-hosting a how-to program on quilting, “Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting,” on public television nationwide for 20 years. I taught millions of people how to make quilts.
How did you start writing?
I've always loved words, reading, and writing, with fiction my favorite genre. However, to make a living, I wrote many how-to books, including co-authoring QUILTER'S COMPLETE GUIDE, published in 1992, still in print, and considered the “bible” of quilting. In retirement, now, I have finally had the opportunity to study and pursue fiction writing, with one novel completed and another nearly so. I love hanging out with other writers.
What do you enjoy about quilting and writing?
Making a quilt and writing are methodical processes. To me, a quilt is a project. A piece of writing is a project. I'm a project person.
Photo: 2012 Fons & Porter
What do quilting and writing bring into your life?
Friendships come quickly to mind. I have many “quilting friends,” colleagues and acquaintances all over the place. I also now have many “writing friends.” When I design and make a quilt, I'm making “something” out of “nothing.” Many times, when I start a quilt and I look at the fabric pieces taking shape on my design wall, I think to myself, “Wow, yesterday this did not exist, and now it's going to become a beautiful quilt.” The same is true of a piece of writing. When you put sentences on a page, you are making something out of nothing. To continue the parallel, a completed quilt brings warmth and comfort to another person. A successful piece of writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, has the potential to bring pleasure to others.
What keeps you going, in life and in the creative process?
I have a strong altruistic streak, instilled by my parents. I have been motivated to take on many projects because in the end they benefit others, for example the renovation of the Iowa Theater, a classic, single-screen movie theater in my home town of Winterset, Iowa, now fully restored and operating in the black. “The Iowa,” as locals call it, is an important cultural element in my town of under 6000 people. I say all the time, “altruism is its own reward.” If you do something that benefits people, you are one of those people. I love movies, and now I can walk two blocks to The Iowa and eat popcorn. The nonprofit theater screens mostly mainstream movies, but we started the monthly Sunday Movie Club over a year ago that screens recent, thought-provoking films, with a book-club-like discussion afterwards. We have over 50 members.
What art do you turn to when you're trying to get by emotionally?
I feel that my lifelong pursuit of creative projects has had a lot to do with my mental and emotional stability. Dedicated quilters often joke that “quilting is cheaper than psychiatry,” which is not to diminish the tremendous benefits of therapy and counseling, but members of the quilting community spend a lot of time with their quilting friends, talking and sewing together. Quilters face a lot of things together.
Photo: 2013 Fons & Porter
What would you say to a Blanket Gravity reader who may be struggling with their mental health?
This may sound simplistic, but taking up a hobby that involves step-by-step processes helps a person in many ways. A wise person I knew called it “the joy of making.” Developing basic skills in almost anything can instill self worth. When I'm sewing, problems I may be dealing with go on the back burner, but in a way I'm still massaging them subconsciously. It's kind of like going to a movie where you lose yourself in it. You emerge from the darkened theater with added perspective.
Anything else you'd like to share?
If any Blanket Gravity readers plan to visit Winterset, they can contact me via my website, mariannefons.com. I'd love to show them another one of my local projects, the Iowa Quilt Museum. It's a beautiful, single gallery, right on our town square (which is a National Historic District) in what was once a J.C.Penney store. The exhibits change quarterly, so there's always something wonderful to see, whether traditional quilts, studio art quilts, contemporary quilts.
Photo: Marianne Fons