Sonoma quilt exhibit bridges history, friendship through generations

A new exhibit in Sonoma highlights the artistry and evolution of quilting, with every stitch and each snippet of fabric telling a story or painting a portrait of historic landmarks in the Valley of the Moon.

“Sonoma in Quilts” is the latest of four shows curated by Sonoma resident Kate Schertz at Depot Park Museum. It brings together 10 historic quilts from the collection of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, along with one surprise — 10 handcrafted quilts passed through five generations of a local family, and showcases the skill and creativity crafted into a dozen art quilts made especially for the exhibition.

Since its opening last month, the show has drawn more people than any other exhibit there in memory, said Patricia Cullinan, president of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, which operates the museum.

Quilts share, pass on stories

Visitors are greeted with an illustrated history of quilting, including the story of Lizzie Hobbs Keckley, a Virginia plantation slave who became a master quilt maker and purchased freedom for herself and her son with funds from her quilt sales. She later became a professional seamstress and quilter for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Schertz notes that “the quilt’s role in the fabric of society dates to antiquity.”

Many of the Sonoma quilts share stories: a friendship star quilt made in 1860 as a wedding gift by a group of friends, their names and a few quotations in the center of each star; a fancy silk patchwork quilt made in 1888 to raise funds for the steeple of a church in a California Gold Rush town; a cigarette quilt made in 1927 featuring thousands of French knots and more than 300 tiny silk flags that were included as collectibles in packets of high-end-brand cigarettes, much like “Cracker Jack prizes for adults,” Schertz said.

“The historical value of quilts is their provenance,” she said. “That just makes the quilt that much more significant. If you don’t know the story, it loses lots of historical value.”

For a group of men and women in their late 50s, the exhibit is a personal step back in time. They made a striking American bicentennial quilt in red, white and blue when they were sixth-grade students at El Verano Elementary School in Sonoma Valley. It earned a blue ribbon at the Sonoma County Fair in 1976, a ribbon now affixed to the quilt.

Local quilts display patriotism

Darla Parker-Buckley lives in Arizona but plans to attend the exhibit when she visits Sonoma Valley this summer. She graduated from Sonoma Valley High School 40 years ago but remembers making the quilt, which features 39 squares of patriotic images including stars, American flags and liberty bells, all surrounding a center panel with the dates 1776 and 1976.

“I remember picking what square we wanted to do, and we were given the flexibility to choose fabric, embroidery, etcetera,” Parker-Buckley said in an email. “I was set on a blue embroidery liberty bell.”

The project was coordinated as part of a history lesson by her teacher, Mrs. Turner, who was “kind, creative and inspiring,” Parker-Buckley said.

Turner and her 26 young quilters autographed the back of the quilt.

Another patriotic quilt in the collection came to Schertz by chance. Made by a group of local women as a raffle prize to help fund the Bear Flag Sesquicentennial Celebration, it ended up decades later with Carolyn Marcinkowski, who’d purchased the winning ticket she’d given to a friend.

The quilt’s original owner had moved to Florida, but when she died the quilt was returned to Marcinkowski. Marcinkowski’s son-in-law was chatting with Schertz when he was returning rugs his business had cleaned for her – and she happened to mention the upcoming quilt exhibit.

“My mother-in-law has this quilt,” he told Schertz, explaining the story. When Marcinkowski heard about the exhibit, she donated the patchwork quilt with handcrafted patriotic images and quotations to the historical society.

“It was just serendipity,” Schertz said. “It’s a fantastic, fantastic quilt.”

Heritage quilts from 1860

Museum docent Joanne Filipello has many personal stories about heritage quilts. She’s the fourth generation of the five generation Dunham family whose quilts are part of the exhibit. They date to her great-grandmother, Sarah Dunham, and her husband, Milton Dunham, who was a Wells Fargo stagecoach driver.

The family’s quilt display dates from 1860 to 2018, when Filipello’s daughter, Justine Filipello, made a crazy quilt in the fiber arts program at the Sonoma Community Center. The older quilts date “from the sod house on the prairie to the homestead in Montana to California in the 1930s.”

Most were utilitarian, handcrafted from scraps of fabric and used to keep family members warm. One, a baby quilt with squares of hand stitched animals edged with yellow gingham, was made for Justine in 1980 by her grandmother.

Joanne Filipello recognizes the fabric used in some of the quilts, including her grandmother’s 1950s flower garden quilt. The various flower petals were made from school clothes worn by Filipello and her brother.

“They really tell the story of when they were made and the fabric that was available,” she said.

She credits “old Samsonite hard luggage” with providing a safe storage space for the quilts. “They’ve been kept rather carefully in very good shape,” Filipello said. “It’s pretty amazing we still have samples of some of this very old work.”

Historical sites made into art

While the suitcases preserve the Filipello’s quilts, the newest quilts in the “Sonoma in Quilts” exhibit are intended as artwork for display. Each is available for purchase, with a portion of the proceeds donated to the historical society.

Schertz invited the 23-member North Bay art quilt group, Fiber Expressions, to create scenes of historic Sonoma locations for the show. Some are familiar places, like the Sonoma mission, the Sonoma Community Center (built in 1916 as the Sonoma Grammar School) and the 1913 Carnegie Library that’s now home to the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau on the Sonoma Plaza.

“And of course the Sebastiani Theatre,” Schertz said. “It wouldn’t be Sonoma without the Sebastiani Theatre.” The 1933 moviehouse with the neon marquee is among the architectural – and cultural – gems on the plaza.

The art quilts also feature several historic Sonoma homes, with some quilters inspired by the ink and vine-charcoal images in the book “Drawing Sonoma” by local artist Barbara White Perry.

Schertz had seen works by featured art quilter JoAnne Lincoln at a Sonoma quilt show last summer.

“Her art quilts are absolutely astounding,” Schertz said.

True labor of love

The two discussed the idea for a show and within six months Fiber Expressions members completed 12 art quilts depicting Sonoma scenes. Lincoln made one of a 1910 stone house and another of the Swiss Chalet at the General Vallejo Home, now part of Sonoma State Historic Park.

“Art quilting is so varied in style and technique and breaks all preconceived notions of what a quilt is,” Lincoln said. They often are “a labor of love,” taking longer to complete than expected.

Quilters use “a variety of techniques including hand piecing, appliqué, adding detail with thread sketching and quilting,” she said. The results include 3D effects, folk art interpretations and some that are such exact replicas they look like photographs.

Schertz worked as a professional costume designer and has textiles from the many places she’s visited in the U.S., Europe and Africa. She marvels at art quilting, particularly the talents and diverse styles of those featured in “Sonoma in Quilts.”

She hopes visitors will come away not only with a sense of the historical society’s dedication to preserving local history but also an awareness and appreciation for quilting and its long history.

And, she said, “I hope they understand the line between art and craft is fine, and maybe doesn’t even exist.”