Quilting Lessons

In the middle of a successful academic career, art historian Janet Catherine Berlo found herself literally at a loss for words. A severe case of writer’s block forced her to abandon a book manuscript midstream; she found herself quilting instead. Scorning the logic, planning, and order of scholarship and writing, she immersed herself in freewheeling patterns and vivid colors. For eighteen months she spent all day, every day, quilting. This book penetrates to the very heart of women’s lives, focusing on their relationships to family and friends, to work, to daily tasks. It is a search for meaning at midlife, a search for an integration of career and creativity.

Janet Catherine Berlo, a professor of art history at the University of Rochester who specializes in Native American art, is also a creative writer and quilter. Her many books include Wild By Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts, Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World, and Native North American Art (with coauthor Ruth Phillips).