yarn and knitted scarves.
Women are knitting and quilting again, soothing jangled nerves with color and rhythm and camaraderie.
By Susan Caba
Listen. That rhythmic clicking you hear is the sound of America knitting, as women—all ages, all incomes, all education levels—take up the homey craft of their grandmothers. The whirring noise in the background, under the melody of women’s laughter and conversation, is the purr of sewing machines at gatherings where women use color, pattern and texture not only to create quilts but also to mend nerves frayed by the stresses of modern life.
I learned to knit as a child on Saturday mornings at Montgomery Ward, starting with wedge-shaped booties in the basic knit-one, purl-one mode and working up to a vest (it was supposed to be a sweater, but I never got around to the sleeves). Quilting was a fading craft practiced by my grandmother’s friends in Iowa. Who knew that quilting and knitting groups would become the post-9/11 answer to book clubs, occasions for (mostly) women to create domestic art and community at the same time?
There are CEOs knitting through board meetings, ministers knitting at committee meetings. A psychiatrist I know knits scarves as Christmas presents and often wears sweaters of her own making. Alice Montgomery, a singer and voice teacher, has pieced a quilt for each of her sons and is planning an artwork to hang over her piano. Quilt artist Melanie Redlar presides over a weekly gathering of friends where women kvetch while stitching patterns as traditional as Drunkard’s Path and as contemporary as one woman’s ode to hormone-replacement therapy.
“I piece quilts because they calm me; they give me a focus for doing something with my hands,” says Montgomery. “Why I quilt rather than, say, knit is for the fabric—I go crazy for the colors, the textures, the patterns. It’s like creating a painting.”
Of course you can go crazy for fabrics and yarns at craft shops and chain stores. But it’s specialty shops that are making the revival of knitting and quilting possible—places such as the QUILTED FOX (10403 Clayton, 314-993-1181, www.quiltedfox.com), where the spiritual descendants of the Montgomery Ward ladies guide novices through the nine-patch and beyond. Louise Georgia, Pat Nelson and Linda Grabel are quick with pattern help, color choice and suggestions on technique. The second-floor shop has such an array of fabrics—including Asian-themed patterns and African designs—that it’s hard to choose just a few. I once bought a dozen fat quarters (a measure of fabric sold for quilting) and kept them folded in a fancy bag. I never made the quilt, but I play with the quarters, arranging them in various color and print combinations, almost like a puzzle. Ask any quilter or potential quilter—we all have a fabric stash. I, at least, am just as dazzled by the possibilities the fabrics represent as I am by finishing a particular project.
At PATCHES (337 S. Main in St. Charles, 636-946-6004, www.patches3.com), owner Ann Hazelwood knows her piecework and stitches—she’s the go-to woman in St. Louis for quilt appraisals. The inventory at Patches includes more than 60 bolts of polka-dotted fabric, an abundance of red and white patterns (start now for Valentine’s Day) and quilts by local artists.
I came across two yarn and needlework stores with similarly expert help for knitters. The WEAVING DEPARTMENT (180 Dunn, upstairs at the Myers House, 314-921-7800) is the “it” place for yarn—fuzzy yarn, eyelash yarn, ribbon yarn, chenille yarn, even bamboo yarn in hot pink and purple. I managed to resist a variegated cotton yarn in sea colors to mix with a complementary railroad-track skein for a simple scarf. I do not need another addiction. Friederike Seligman watches me struggle; she’s buying yarn to knit a sweater on a long plane trip. Like many Europeans, she learned to knit in grade school (“a sock in some terrible yarn—I hated it”) then let it lapse and took it up again in college. Now she knits at gatherings of German-speaking friends. Seligman’s about to move to another state and says she’s already checked out the knitting shops in her new city. “If there weren’t any,” she says, “I wouldn’t be moving there.”
THREADQUARTERS (717 N. New Ballas, 314-432-2555) opened four years ago as a needlepoint shop. But right after 9/11, says owner Melissa Burke, knitting took off—the same observation made by Kay Baranowski at the Weaving Department. Burke moved into a bigger storefront, hung hanks and skeins of yarn on one wall, and installed a couch for drop-ins. Build it and they will come—knitting now accounts for half her business. The day I was there, she was showing a middle-school girl how to cast on 10 stitches while an older woman worked on a purse using circular needles and a fuzzy yarn in shades of peach and green. Knitting, says Burke, is a small miracle of domestic art in which a garment grows from nothing. In walks Monica Dupre, who has never knitted anything more complicated than a potholder. Dressed in a pinstripe suit, she begins gathering yarn. “I’m pregnant,” she says, “and I just found out today I’m having a girl. I just have a craving to knit.”
