NOTE: Materials fees are required for some workshops. These fees are paid directly to faculty and are not part of your registration fee.
She called them her “sculptures in cloth”. In the mid-20th century, while other quiltmakers stitched Grandmother’s Flower Garden and Churn Dash bed quilts, Bertha Meckstroth was reverse-appliquéing bats, crosses, and Aramaic text into quilts made for the wall. Anticipating by some 50 years the emergence of the art quilt movement, Bertha made nearly 200 of these iconoclastic objects, finished with spider web, angel wing, and feather motifs. For all her artistic triumphs, however, Bertha’s tale is a tragedy: When she died in a Chicago sanitarium in 1960, her will — which explicitly stated her quilts should be kept together — was ignored. Nobody cared what a “spinster” wanted, after all. The bank contested the will and won, scattering Bertha’s life’s work to the wind. For the past two years, Mary Fons has been tracking down the quilts of Bertha Meckstroth and her investigation is paying off. In this debut lecture, Mary will present her extraordinary findings, including intel from primary sources and never-before-seen images. This fascinating, true story of a woman wronged isn’t over yet. ASL services provided through generous support from HandiQuilter.
