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STORY
Distracting Details She’s
been teaching quilting for nearly 30 years, and not a semester has gone
by when Nancy Fisher hasn’t noticed someone in her class who is using
quilting as a way to heal. “Quilting
has always brought people together,” said Fisher, who teaches Making
Quilted Products at West City Center. “The pioneer women found a
great deal of emotional satisfaction gathering to make quilts. Today women
have more freedom to speak, but in times of need and trouble, you will
still find quilting as a way to channel emotions and help recover from
loss.” Fisher
began teaching clothing and dressmaking during the ’70s in the district,
adding quilting when the need became apparent. She actually retired in
the mid-’90s, but returned to the district four years later, now
teaching regularly, including her weekly quilting class. “It’s
something I’ve always loved doing,” Fisher said of quilting.
“My grandmother sewed, and I was taught to quilt as a little girl.
Quilting goes through different cycles in our culture. It will be very
popular, then interest will calm down a little. I know that my class on
Fridays has more than 50 people. It’s at capacity, and that tells
me quilting is something of interest right now.” With
each class come new stories shared by students. “One
of the most satisfying things about quilting is that you can do it by
yourself or with a group,” Fisher said. “When you are by yourself,
you have time to reflect on the things that are going on in your life.
When you are with a group, you are more likely to share those thoughts
as the group becomes closer.” Fisher
tells the story of student Beverly Glines, who in 1992 was watching her
husband suffer from terminal cancer. The doctor told Glines to find a
hobby to keep her mind occupied, and she wound up in Continuing Education’s
quilting class. Trying to combine thousands of pieces of fabric into a
cohesive whole distracted her from the turmoil around her. “Quilting,”
Glines said, “drove me sane.” Another
student, Ellen Magee, was a cancer patient herself, and underwent chemotherapy
last year. She and her daughter quilted together through that ordeal,
and a year later, Magee is still quilting, and surviving. “Health
problems can be all-consuming,” said Nancy Thomas, a psychologist
and assistant program director at the University of California at San
Diego Outpatient Psychiatric Services. “It’s particularly crucial
for people with chronic illnesses to get involved in creative outlets.” Margaret
Creek is now completing her master’s thesis in quilting as therapy
at Loyola Marymount University. “Just as healing is a process, so
quiltmaking is a process, which is why the two can become so entwined,”
Creek said. “Facing something like death or illness can be overwhelming,
but if you can break the overwhelming whole into pieces, it becomes more
manageable.” Creek
tells of a mother she interviewed who was grieving the loss of her son.
By creating a quilt one square at a time, each square represented a different
aspect of her relationship with her son. “In the end, she has the
finished quilt to represent the whole of him,” Creek said. Fisher
herself has experienced this aspect of quilting. She had a relationship
break with her daughter, after the daughter suffered from nervous exhaustion
while working on her doctorate at Harvard. “We
didn’t speak, we were assigning blame,” Fisher said. “Eventually
what brought us together was making a quilt for a friend’s wedding.” As
well as being pivotal in healing situations, this ancient art is also
bringing generations together in this modern, mobile age. Younger women—and
quilters are predominately, but not exclusively, female—living distant
from extended families use quilting gatherings as an opportunity to tap
into the wisdom of the older generation. “They can learn from us
‘gray heads’ and they keep us young,” said Glines. “It
also reinforces family,” she added. “I’m teaching my granddaughter
to quilt.”
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