quiltersmuse.com Blog

After walking into a quilt shop today that has fabrics that are bright, beautiful, large scale, for babies, or batiks, I was struck that I did not see one fabric that in any way simulates “old” designs.

I was looking for a fabric line of reproduction fabrics. Maybe I’ll have to resort to ordering what I’d like, online. Don’t get me wrong! It is a lovely shop and has beautiful items for sale and I’m sure I will return sometime when I’m in the mood to make something more contemporary.

Just yesterday, a friend reported that a book idea is not going to fly. The idea that was shot down by the publisher who was contacted, centers around Civil War era quilts. “Old” is not selling right now, the person was told. Is this a trend?

Personally, I love old designs, both geometric and appliqué. Many of the new designs seem to be a poor imitation that don’t show much creativity. With thousands of traditional quilt designs available already, why try to reinvent the wheel?

I have an answer for that, of course, in one word: Money. People want to have the latest. That idea extends beyond the quilt world. We all have to see the “latest movie,” the latest “hot off the press book,” even … the newborn baby. New is exciting. Old is not. That idea extends to people, as well.

Yet, in my personal experience, I have enjoyed friendships with older people who have a multitude of wrinkles, whose jaw sags a little more than it used to, who have a few more pounds than when they were younger. The wisdom of Age is chiseled into a face, I think. Happy lines appear on a face that smiles a lot, and scowl lines can reveal an unhappy soul. The value of those associations have been immeasurable to me and my growth as a human being.

We can look to our overall experiences in our society. How many people born after, say 1965, have any concept of a timeline of history? When did the Civil War occur? What does the term “19th century” mean, exactly? In what time period did the Great Depression happen? With no real sense of history, we become a shallow people.

Take the broad who was blocking our car today in a parking lot. She was attempting to stuff food into her mouth, talk on a cell phone, and turn her car around a corner, with one hand, all at the same time. Is there anywhere we can go that we, as a society, do not have to constantly “plugged in?”

We are becoming shallow intellectually, and that scares me, because the strength of society is in its accumulated knowledge. How can anyone make a decision, if the past is not referenced as to what worked … or didn’t? Are we doomed to make mistakes, again and again, just because no one is keeping watch on history and results?

Please tell me that it is not true that we do not care about the past anymore. The past has a lot to offer us. I revel in stories about times when life was hard but in many ways seemed less complicated. I’m sure there were “other” complications that we don’t have today. I guess it is simple fun to over-romanticize the past.

I miss the values that I associate with rural New England, as I perceive them to be, including faith in a Creator, a willingness to help a neighbor, the bartering of goods, a day’s pay for a day’s work, honesty, community spirit, and sense of place.

I will leave you with one question: What is so good about the present that makes it better than the past? Other than the fact that we live in the present, I’d have to say that the past was in many ways superior. I’d love to ride in a carriage, sleigh or train. I’d love to wear shoes and socks made by my mother and father. I’d love to go to a one room schoolhouse. I’d love to go to any school where emphasis was placed on getting the facts right, as well as the joy of discovery.

Yes, I am nostalgic for a different time, with different values, when money was not the be-all and end-all, and when we were less “developed” as a society. But then again, if I lived at an earlier time, I would not be able to share my thoughts with you, in this manner. To every experience, we can assign a plus or a minus.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

Tags: values of rural New England

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 4:41 pm and is filed under History, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.