Quilters Have Success Squared Away

By Robert Holmes
TheStreet.com Staff Reporter
6/26/2007 10:08 AM EDT
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Starting a company with only a few thousand dollars in hand seems like a daunting task, unless the business benefits from user-submitted content.No, we're not talking the Internet or YouTube.com here. Starting a small business now with little cost doesn't have to be digital -- this one is something very tangible, even old-fashioned: quilt-making.

Leigh Lowe, owner and founder of Campus Quilt, established her company as the thesis project for an M.B.A. degree at the end of 2000. Now in its seventh year, the business has grown leaps and bounds from its humble beginnings.

"I launched the business out of my apartment," Lowe recalls. "I was 24 years old with $5,000 I had saved from my first job out of college. We basically only made quilts for my friends and family that year."

One of the reasons a business such as Lowe's can succeed is because it relies on its customers to provide a bulk of the raw materials. Campus Quilt's specialty is transforming old concert t-shirts, or just about any type of fabric, into a high-quality, future-heirloom blanket. Lowe was her own first customer as the business was coming together.

"My husband and I each have a quilt commemorating our college days," she said. "After that, every t-shirt I could find went into one test quilt or another."

The Process

Buyers begin their order online or by phone with a $100 deposit. Campus Quilt then ships out a mailing kit that contains everything one would need to package up their shirts, including a prepaid mailing label. (There will be more about that later.)

The quilt is assembled within two or three weeks after the company receives the shirts, and the balance is then due upon completion. Prices for quilts run from $125 up to about $400.

For a fee around $25 to $150, depending on the quilt's size, customers can add a 1 1/2 inch sashing between each t-shirt square. Embroidered lines are available at an additional cost as well.

We do a lot of t-shirt quilts for graduates, concert-goers, and athletes of all kinds," says Lowe. "But, we can also make almost any customized quilt requested of us."

Lowe points out that old concert t-shirts aren't the only items the business has received in buyers' packages. Campus Quilt has made quilts out of photos, baby clothes, swimming suits, ties and baseball hats.

"One customer had us make a quilt from a collection of golf towels. It was a really neat project," recalls Lowe.

Customer Care

As her business is still relatively small, Lowe is able to provide personal care to every client. As there is a certain sentimentality involved in swapping a closet-full of shirts for an embroidered quilt, Lowe insists on the best customer service available. And that service has paid dividends, through word-of-mouth business.

Typically, a representative from Campus Quilt will respond to customers via email in less than 24 hours within ordering a mailing kit, explaining the entire process. Once the customer authorizes a deposit for the job, a quilt kit is mailed, including directions, labels, color swatches for the border and backing, and spaces for special instructions.

Campus Quilt provides each customer with email updates throughout the process and, usually within three weeks, the finished product is mailed back.

Lowe says she has learned how powerful the individual customer is through reviews of the product, even though the company has been profiled on big media outlets including NBC's "Today Show" and the "Rachael Ray Show."

But most important, Lowe knows that it's the customer that matters most. After all, Campus Quilt's customers aren't just paying for a product, they're practically providing it themselves.

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Patterns of Controver

Debating the legend of quilts as Underground Railroad maps

By Diane Cole

Posted 6/24/07

Fact, fiction, folklore, or a bit of all three: Did runaway slaves seek clues in the patterns of handmade quilts, strategically placed by members of the Underground Railroad?

This ongoing debate surfaced as front-page news earlier this year when a New York City Central Park memorial to Frederick Douglass was slated to include two plaques referring to this code. Historians cried foul—loudly. There is no evidence for such a code, says Giles Wright, director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission. "I know of no historian who supports this idea, and it's extremely rare to get that kind of consensus."

Mention of the quilt symbols in that plaque's text will now be omitted. But the quilt key legend itself remains very much aboveground. Since 1999, when Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard published their bestseller, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, the secret-code story has woven its way into American folklore.

But historians note that the sole source for that story was one woman—Ozella McDaniel Williams, a retired educator and quilt maker in Charleston, S.C., who recounted for Tobin a family tradition that had been passed down to her through the generations. Embedded in 12 quilt patterns, she said, were directions to aid fugitive slaves on their journey to freedom. Depending on the pattern, a seemingly innocent quilt left on a porch or fence or hung in a window could signal to slaves on the plantation to get ready to escape (Monkey Wrench pattern), go north (North Star pattern), or zigzag to throw off pursuers (the Drunkard's Path pattern).

Although Williams died shortly before the book was published, her 73-year-old niece, Serena Wilson of Columbus, Ohio, says she also learned about the hidden maps from Williams's mother. "The quilt code was kept secret because it was dangerous to talk about escaping," Wilson says.

Misinterpret. But there is no reference for the code beyond that family, contends Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. "There's no mention anywhere by anyone, African-American or white, of any quilt being used at any time." Nor do coded quilts from the period survive. Quilt historian Barbara Brackman notes that there is abundant evidence that slaves did sew quilts and that abolitionists made quilts to raise money for their antislavery activities. But some of the patterns that are said to be part of the Underground Railroad code did not exist until well after the Civil War, Brackman says.

Tobin believes her book has been misinterpreted. Numerous details ascribed to the story—like hanging quilts along the way to indicate safe houses—"simply aren't in the book," she says. Moreover, "We make it clear that this was Ozella's story only," she says, and that such codes "could have" been used in this way and only on one particular plantation. "We're not talking about hundreds or thousands of folks using this code," says Tobin. "The story has grown in ways that we had not intended."

This story appears in the July 2, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070624/2quilts.htm

In stitches: Quilt show appeals to high- and low-tech

By JESSICA CEJNAR

Peninsula Clarion

Verna Espenshade experienced machine quilting when she came to Soldotna three weeks ago. Originally from Pennsylvania, Espenshade is impressed by the delicate textures and loops a fabric freestyler creates, but says real quilting is done by hand.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she said, “but it’s not authentic.”

After 30 or 40 years of quilting, Espenshade can tell the difference between a hand-sewn quilt and a quilt done by machine just by looking at the fabric.

“When (quilting) started out people used patches from left-over sewing,” she said, scanning the walls of Cook Inlet Academy’s gymnasium at this year’s Quilting on the Kenai quilt show. “They didn’t strive to make something so gorgeous. You just needed a cover for your bed.”

Looking over quilts covered with star and diamond patterns, hand-dyed prints and tiny yo yos (squares of fabric stitched and pulled tight to form a pocket), she pointed to a rosy quilt in the corner and said it was hand-sewn.

“That’s very old,” she said, “you can tell by looking at the fabric.”

Quilts ranging from table runners and wall hangings to king-sized decked the walls of Cook Inlet Academy for the quilt show. The event started on Thursday and will last until Saturday afternoon, culminating in a treadle race and fashion show. The Art to Wear fashion show will be at the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska in Kenai on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Mary Lee of Anchorage said the quilt Espenshade pointed to was known as a variation on a broken dish and was made from 1930s fabric blocks found in an antique trunk.

“(We) sewed it by hand and put it on a white background,” she said.

Entering a quilter’s world is to enter a kaleidoscope of color, patterns and fabrics. In this world of needle and thread, it’s easy to picture a circle of ladies engaged in an old-fashioned quilting bee. Nowadays, computerized sewing machines have brought the art of quilting into the 21st century.

Sharon Hale of Soldotna said she loves her sewing machine, but there were definitely purists out there. To her, the thing that makes contemporary quilting different from the quilts our grandmothers make are oranges, purples and other bright colors.

“Quiltmakers from years ago would roll over in their graves if they saw these colors,” she said.

Hale originally made her living sewing clothes, so instead of making bedspreads she quilts jackets, vests and other garments.

“It has a lot of the same techniques,” she said, “(I use) more beads and threads. You wouldn’t want all that stuff if you were going to put it on a bed.”

Thirteen years ago Pat Reese, owner of Robin Place Fabrics in Soldotna, originally held the show at the Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center with her four children to help her.

“It was quite an experience,” she said. “We’ve come a long way since then.”

With more than 150 exhibits and vendors, Reese said she expects 1,000 people to come have their quilts appraised, vote on their favorite quilt, compete in the treadle race and view the fashion show.

The treadle race was Jess Tubbs’ idea. President of J&H Sewing and Vacuum, Tubbs said he grew up playing with a treadle sewing machine and could sew faster than his brothers and sisters.

“Everybody gets a kick out of it,” he said, talking about the race. “As far as I know it’s the only one in the world ever.”

Way different from today’s high-tech sewing machines, these machines are heavy, made of wrought iron and are 80 years old or better. Tubbs said the contestants have to get through a three-foot long piece of fabric and whoever reaches the end first wins a race. When all the winners have been determined, they compete, vying for a Pfaff Smart 100 sewing machine.

“The people that sit down to those treadles, they get so much energy pumping the treadle that we started have holders for the chairs,” Tubbs said, “because they’re pushing the chairs away.”

After more than 40 years of pumping a treadle, Tubbs said even the fastest quilter can’t beat him.

“I’ve eliminated myself from the competition because I would be afraid of walking away with the grand prize,” he said.

In addition to the treadle race and fashion show, visitors will have a chance to get their quilts appraised, vote for their favorite quilt, view antique quilts and participate in lectures and demonstrations. There also will be a quilt walk with opportunities to win raffle prizes as well as the grand door prize, a Pfaff S1100 sewing machine. For more information and directions to the event, visit http://www.robinplacefabrics.com/Special-Events.php.

Jessica Cejnar can be reached at jessica.cejnar@peninsulaclarion.com.
http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/062207/news_0622new004.shtml