Quilt Stories

Literary works honoring the role of women and quilting in history—from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Sharyn McCrumb, and others.

This collection of stories, plays, poems, and songs featuring the making of quilts—written from 1845 to the present, mainly by American women—documents women’s literary history. Featuring the work of Bobbie Ann Mason, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Sharyn McCrumb, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, and many others, Quilt Stories is a colorful literary album of stories, poems, and plays that celebrate quilting as a pattern in women’s history. These stories—grouped under the themes of memory, courtship, struggle, mystery, and wisdom—reflect the importance of quilting in the lives of American women, not only as a practical craft and a creative outlet, but also as an integral part of the social community.

“The 28 works included in Quilt Stories restore to women a part of their history and their sense of community, an important service in a present time in which quilting has perhaps become a more private and individual art, though it still serves widely as a medium for social exchange and cooperative endeavor.” —Appalachian Quarterly

“Macheski has pieced together a variety of literary fabrics into a unique design which represents women’s struggle for identity in a masculine world.” —Benton, Arkansas Courier

“Each writing shares a glimpse of what quilting means to those people who practice the art and how it helps us to see, remember, learn, know and express our feelings.” —Quilt World

“An innovative approach to writing the history of women.” —Northwest Ohio Quarterly