---
narrator: Janet Finley
subject: Quilting
facilitator: Nathan Schneider
date: 2025-07-19
approved: 2025-08-05
summary: "In the American West, quilts represent an ongoing tradition of women's lives, their skill, and their love."
location: "Lakewood, CO USA"
#headshot: "first_last.png"
topics: [ancestors, art, gender, family, organizations]
links:
  - text: '"Quilts in Everyday Life," The Quilt Show'
    url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXPgwQ4D3c"
---

*If you're meeting people in the world of quilting, how do you introduce yourself?*

I just use my name. A lot of people will know my name who don't know me personally. But for today you can just say Janet.

*How do they know you? What does your name mean for people in that world?*

They know me because I wrote this book called *Quilts in Everyday Life, 1855--1955*, with the subtitle *A 100-Year Photographic History*. The book came about when I was director of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum from 2000 to 2004. One of the interns showed me her website for her quilt guild, and it had a 1930s photograph of women holding up a quilt. I said, "Where'd you get that?" She said on eBay. I didn't know what eBay was---it was new then. She showed me how to bid on photographs.

It turned out there were quite a few of them. I learned to bid on eBay and started collecting them assiduously. It was the perfect time and place because I had the time and extra money. I did it for a good ten years and was the major buyer on eBay of photographs with quilts in them. At the beginning, eBay didn't have good controls on who was bidding, so if you lost the auction for a photo, you could find out who the winner was and contact them to offer more. Now you can't do that anymore. They've tightened up their control. But at the beginning it was fun.

For about ten years I bought almost every photo that had a quilt in it, dating from 1855 to 1955. I stopped at 1955 because it didn't interest me to go more current. I wound up with about a thousand images and have the largest collection of photos with quilts in the United States. Anyone can challenge me, and I can defend that.

To write the book, I wanted to date the photos because the more interesting part wasn't particularly the quilt---it was the socioeconomic background that envelops the photo. I always had an interest in photography. I was an amateur shutterbug---I was taking photos of my family all the time, so the combination of my two interests was great. I had to learn about different photographic formats like tin types, cabinet cards, and *carte de visites*. I could date the photograph by the photo format. I also had to delve into fashion because you can date photos by dress. I had costume experts helping me on dress. I'd make a stab at it and they would either agree or correct me.

The photos were so interesting because of the stories they told about the sociological conditions of the time. Out of those thousand photos I owned, I took 250 and put them in the book. That's how people know me.

*How did quilting begin for you? Where did your life with quilting start?*

My grandmother was a quilter---my grandma, Matilda Maser---but I didn't know it at the time. She lived in Greeley, Colorado and we'd visit her during the summer. I saw a lot of her, but she wasn't quilting then. That was done with. She was making cross-stitch aprons. Quilting was in her past.

As time went on, I found out she was a big quilter. She made a quilt for all of her six girls and had quilting bees at her house. She made her quilts on a treadle quilting machine. But she didn't teach me to quilt. I didn't even know she was a quilter.

It turns out she gave my mother a Sunbonnet Sue quilt, but my mother didn't value it as craft. My grandmother made all her girls' dresses throughout the time they were growing up, and my mother's goal by the time she graduated from high school was to get a store-bought dress. So she didn't value this quilting heritage and did not pass it on to me. In fact, she used her Sunbonnet Sue quilt as a mattress cover under the bed. It has worn marks to this day showing that use.

So where did I get quilting from? It came genetically, I guess, because my mother didn't pass it on and my grandmother didn't particularly either. In high school, I loved fabric and doing things with my hands. I'm a crafting-type person. I have a brother and sister who both have PhDs, but that's not the route I took. I was a failed dressmaker but loved the fabrics.

When I got into college, I made my first quilt. I thought I wanted something that was cheap, that you could use fabric scraps with---it's thrifty that way. But little did I know it would turn into this obsession for the rest of my life, and it was not inexpensive.

*How did you learn back in high school and college?*

I taught myself. It was just the beginning of a big revival of quilting. I was in college from 1960 to 1964 in Greeley, but by the '70s there was a revival going on nationwide. There was a big quilt show in New York City where they showed quilts as an artistic expression. That started waking people up. The '70s, '80s, and '90s were a real heyday for the quilt revival nationwide---for collecting quilts and making them. Colorado was a big part of that. It's waning a bit now, but it'll come back. But in those days I was in the right time and right place.

I made my first quilt in college and taught myself. There were very few quilt books then, though there are thousands now.

*Were there people you knew around you who were doing this as well? When did you start finding communities around it?*

I was the only one at the beginning. I got married and said to my husband, "I want a sewing machine." We went to Denver Dry Goods and they had a fabric section. I asked my aunt, who was a farm woman in northern Colorado, what sewing machine should I buy. She said, "Bernina---the only one." So that's what I bought. I was just tootling around at home.

Then quilt stores started opening up and quilt magazines came out. I started going to quilt stores and taking some of their lessons, reading the books, and getting more and more involved.

Quilt guilds started coming up. In my area, it was Columbine Quilt Guild in the Arvada area. I was actually at their very first meeting.

*What did the guild do? What was its purpose?*

The guilds are just to get women together to share the quilts they made. They always had show and tell. Then they would pool their resources and invite teachers to come in. By then it was a big phenomenon that was growing, so there were national teachers. You would invite them to your guild and have lessons from national teachers. We were sharing the products we made. You keep getting more and more ideas the more you see.

I became active in that Columbine guild. In the late 1990s, the guild didn't have a charter. So I said, "Well, we're going to write a charter for this quilt guild." There were about thirty women in that guild. They didn't know what I was talking about. But I instigated our first charter.

*Why was the charter important for you?*

Because other, bigger guilds have them. So I thought we needed one. It had rules and regulations and told you how you could run your guild, who would be eligible to join, what your purpose was, and what you're going to do with your dues.

I started bossing people around and found out it's kind of easy. They were listening to me! It was easier than I thought, so I became their president, and we got our charter.

*So you could officially boss people around!*

I was astounded because I never thought I'd ever be in that position. But it actually came easily to me.

Then I was interested in interviewing people who were quilters---people like us often became historians. I had my guild doing that a lot. We would interview people. I was also instrumental in deciding what kinds of classes we would bring in from out of state.

*In a guild like that, did people create boundaries around what the right kind of quilting was or the wrong kinds? Were there debates about how this should be done and how it shouldn't be done?*

There weren't debates per se, but there were influencers. You'd find them in magazines. There were trends. Fabric companies developed fabric lines just for quilters, and those influencers tended to dictate what colors were the right thing and what fabrics you should use. There was an informal set of rules. You didn't say you had to follow the rules, but you were greatly influenced by outside forces---fabric companies, magazines, guild teachers. Things would change, but it would take several years for these modes of influence to evolve. We were being influenced.

*What's an example of one of those rules that people would try to assert?*

A fabric company would come up with a designer line of fabric---maybe ten or twelve patterns with colors. Maybe bluebirds would be in pink, orange, and green. They said you have to make your quilt with our fabric line. Another line would be reproduction fabric. It was really popular to reproduce Civil War quilts, so they would have a whole line of Civil War fabrics.

Modern quilting wasn't really popular then---it is now. Before that, people said you can't use plain fabric colors with fabrics that have a print on them. Those kinds of rules. But now everybody breaks the rules.

*Was there a particular tradition within this culture that you identified with most?*

I love the Civil War.

*Why is that?*

I just like history, and the Civil War fascinates me. So does World War II because I was born into World War II. But the Civil War---I think we're still fighting the Civil War. I like history because it explains the world to me---I always wonder, what the heck happened? Why do we do this or that?

The Civil War was a big draw for me. For about twenty years I collected Civil War fabrics and tried to do Civil War reproduction fabrics. The women in those days were excellent---the surviving quilts we were looking at were fabulous. So it was very inspirational to want to reproduce stuff or be on their par.

I finally got over my Civil War thing. It took twenty years. There was a designer who came on board from California named Kaffe Fassett. By now the men are in on it.

*When do men get involved?*

Almost at the beginning, but they're bigger each year as the years go by. In fact, the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum has a show every two years that is just men's quilts. They tend to look at it as a business and a profession, and they really are hot stuff. Women are just doing it for fun, but men are doing it more professionally.

This designer from California, Kaffe Fassett, raised the bar. His colors are what they call "brights" now---really outrageous colors. I thought, "This guy's nuts," because Civil War is browns and grays and blues---really dull colors with beautiful patterns. But over the years, I liked him more and more. I'm into bright fabrics now. It changes.

*What role did quilting play in your life? What did you make quilts for? What did you do with the quilts that you made?*

I didn't make quilts to keep warm. Even making them today, they're my mental therapy. If things get tough, I don't care if I finish anything---it's the process that counts. When I'm sitting there with this fabric in front of me and the needle and thread, I just calm down. It's so therapeutic. I can never underplay the value that has for me.

I didn't make quilts to be a teacher or to give to family members. I just made them to make them, because I like working with the fabric. A lot of these guilds made quilts for charity, but that wasn't a factor for me. The biggest factor was the therapy part---it's very soothing and calming and satisfying.

I was also drawn to quilts because they told stories about women's roles in the United States. That was especially when I was director of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. What interested me was how quilts showed the value of the unknown woman. We're delving into women's history. Quilts were powerful to me because they showed---our society tends to adulate male figures and forget the common woman who raised the family with the strength and fiber that kept society going.

I thought that opportunity was a miracle. Why would they hire me as director? I was in awe. But they did, and I did a good job.

The exhibits at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum when I was director would have one-person shows for unknown women---their life's work. We were adulating unknown women and giving them a place in society. That inspired me a lot.

*Did you know their names?*

We knew their names. But often you don't know the maker. There has been a movement in the past thirty years to put a label on your quilt. That's really been a big message that we've gotten into the quilt world---that you label your quilt.

*To challenge that type of silencing, where women's names were lost.*

To challenge that history, that silencing. When a woman passes away, and after decades have gone by, the only thing you remember her by would be maybe a piece of jewelry, a recipe, or her quilt. So we do know the names of a lot of them. Even if we didn't know their names, we're still in awe of them.

*Tell me about the journey from writing the charter of the guild to becoming director of the museum. What was in between?*

I was raising a daughter, I was married, I had other jobs. We ran a carnation greenhouse in Colorado. So my quilting hobby was always in the background.

Still, I made many quilts. They've been shown in competitions. I've won many prizes at competitions. I've won a couple of ribbons at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, which is a national show. I cannot believe it. One was on machine quilting. In the very late 1990s, I entered a quilt that was machine quilted for Hari Walner's book on machine quilting and trapunto by machine. But I entered it in the wrong category. The International Quilt Festival called me and said, "Well, if you enter it in the machine quilting category, you'll get third place." I said, "Okay." So they gave me third place down there.

But when I became director of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, things flourished for me. I was semi-retired and could devote more time to my quilting. That led to me becoming a speaker on the national circuit. I would go to other cities and talk about these photographs---the ones with quilts in them---and usually teach a hands-on class. The University of Nebraska has the International Quilt Museum. I would visit them often, and one time I said, "I have these photos. Do you want to see them?" I showed them my slide show, and they said, "Wow, we love it. We've never seen that before."

They said they wanted an exhibit of these photos. The solo exhibit was called *Posing with Patchwork: Quilts in Photographs 1855-1945*. It ran from March 2013 to November 2013. The curators blew-up the photos into huge enlargements of these little cabinet cards. They would show my photo and alongside put a representative type of quilt next to it from their collection. At the exhibit opening, the museum invited me to lecture on my photos. There were about 200-300 people present, and it was exciting for me. My book was out and featured in the museum's bookstore---quite an experience.

Then I became a member of the American Quilt Study Group. I'd always wanted to be a member. Now I had the time. Again, I had these photos that I can be bragging about. I gave many lectures to the American Quilt Study Group. They meet once a year in a city, and that's why my name is known, along with my book.

*What was the difference between that group and the guilds?*

The guilds are just really local---your neighborhood quilters. The American Quilt Study Group was national, so they have about a thousand members. They meet once a year in a big city in the United States. All we do is study and talk about quilts. You learn a lot when you go to those meetings.

By then, historians are focusing on quilts. They date quilts by fabrics, so there are lectures every year about how you date and identify a quilt. Just tons and tons of stuff.

I became a collector too. At the very beginning, I was collecting old, antique quilts. By the time I learned how to buy photos on eBay, I stopped collecting antique quilts because I was going into the photos.

*Say more about what you were talking about earlier---the socioeconomic background of the photos. What do you look for in these photos? How do you read them?*

I have one to show you. To look at this photo, you can see she's sitting in front of a quilt that's an appliqué quilt. Do you know what appliqué means?

*No.*

It's when you take one fabric and lay it on top of another and sew it down. You can make shapes and figures---it has a large range of creativity. Here she felt it was important to have this studio photograph taken, and it was also important to have the quilt in the background, not the studio's painted background.

I am guessing---we don't have her name---it was probably her grandmother's quilt. Next to it is a photo of her grandfather. That was important to her---that those two people show up in her photograph. She valued those two people and wanted them to be a part of her.

*It's interesting how one person is represented in a photograph, the other person is represented in the quilt.*

Yeah. That was important to her and she was a quilter.

Here's another one. This is a cabinet card. The gals on roller skates, but she's wearing a dress that's done in crazy patches all over. We call that a crazy quilt.

*That's beautiful.*

Crazy quilts were really popular from 1880 to 1910 or 1920. It was the fad. But it was such a fad that she made her dress from a crazy quilt. I also had to investigate roller skating. It turns out it was a really hot thing to do in that era because people were skipping church. They weren't going to church---they were going to these roller-skating rinks where young kids could meet with their beaus in ways they couldn't normally. They could skate off, away from the chaperone, and had quite a bit of freedom that way. It was a very fun thing to do in those days.

*So, the quilt becomes an opening into something more.*

The quilt becomes an opening into the lifestyle of that era or the cultural context of that era. In my book, I have post-mortem photos---and a lot of them are babies. I decided to include them because this was a reality of the time. The only memory a family would have of a child might be the photo.

Today it freaks out people because you're not supposed to take pictures of dead people. But in that time era---1880s to 1920---it was okay. It was tastefully done and was a keepsake. I remember my own grandmother on my dad's side had a photo in her bedroom of the ten brothers standing alongside the coffin of brother number eleven. He had died of appendicitis. You could see him in the coffin. This was very tastefully done and was part of their culture.

When the book came out with these post-mortem photos of babies---I only bought pictures of babies in carriages with quilts on top of them---my readers were offended. But I said, "Tough cookies." That's the way it was. I talked about funeral habits of that era versus today.

There are photographers today who are starting to volunteer their time to take pictures of babies that die stillborn. One organization I know is called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. They do very tasteful, beautiful jobs and the parents are very appreciative. The way culture deals with death is interesting.

*How do you learn to see history differently when you look at it through the lens of photographs with quilts? How does history take a different shape?*

It takes you down to the level of the everyday unknown citizen. The unknown woman is what influences me to this day. I'll watch documentaries about generals, and they're fine---great guys who did good---but quilts bring to me the power of women in our society. Most of them are unknown. I want to treasure them.

*What kinds of things can you learn about them from their quilts?*

They lived hard lives. Even in the 1880s and '90s, you think of women on the frontier making quilts by candlelight, and their access to fabrics was limited. But they valued the work because it opened up friendships. They would interface with their neighbors, trading fabrics, trading patterns. There were no quilt books, so they had to learn from their neighbors. They persisted.

That gave them value. They had an artistic way to express themselves. A lot of these quilts, when you look at them, are just beautifully done. If they were exhibited in national shows today, they would win prizes. A lot of them are intricate---a high sense of mathematical ability. It wasn't just a labor of love. It was a labor of love, and it connected them to their community. It kept the community together. It was an invisible cord that tied communities together.

*How do you see the current state of the quilt community today?*

I used to collect antique quilts. Well, that market for antiques has gone down recently. In fact, the market for antiques period has gone down. But things go in cycles, so it'll go up again. The quilting community is still thriving. It's gone in the direction of wall art and fiber expression and color and vibrancy.

In fact, the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum---when I was director, our membership was around 300 or 350 people, but now it's like 900 people. We're talking about twenty years later. So it's thriving. They have more than enough quilts for exhibits. It's not dying---it's there, but it's more embedded in craft. Is it a craft or an art---that's a debate. It's alive and well.

*What's at stake in that debate about craft versus art?*

There's always a debate, and it's not answered---it hasn't been settled yet.

Here's a story. When I worked for an oil and gas company at the Republic Plaza building in downtown Denver, on the 53rd floor---the very top one---they had an annual show for all the personnel in that building, showing their crafts. The show was called *On Your Own Time*. People entered pottery, oil painting, watercolor---hundreds of employees in the building. I entered my quilt, which was on the modern side. It won first place. So, is it a craft or is it an art? In that show my quilt won over pottery, oil painting, watercolors. It's an art to me---I'm on the art side.

*At the same time, these things can keep you warm.*

Yes, they can. The new trend nowadays is to machine quilt, and that's an art unto itself. But I decided not to indulge in that too much because they are so intricately done, and there's so much thread on the surface of that quilt that it makes it stiff. It's really more like a wall hanging---can't really be used as bedding. I'm into hand quilting where you get a soft, pliable, comfy type thing.

*Is that also where the relaxation comes in?*

Yes. Again, that needle is mental therapy.

*How do you approach teaching people who are coming into this tradition?*

I don't do it now, but I did. I have two grandkids and the first one---I taught her how to quilt. I enrolled her in some classes at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, and we wound up with a quilt. I gave her a sewing machine and gave the youngest one a sewing machine too. But she didn't take to it. Maybe she will later, maybe not. She does have her sewing machine. I thought that's good because you need a sewing machine to do mending, if nothing else.

All of us---everybody in the quilting world---wants to share. They all want to show you how they do it. There's always that. When I have my two quilting friends come over here every few months, we sit around the table and talk and gossip, but we want to show, "Oh, this is how I do this, and this is how I did that." "Oh, I didn't know that." You're always picking up something.

*How do you maintain that culture of sharing?*

You just keep going to guild meetings, and then you can have these little quilting bees coming to your house. Like these two women come. That's how we do it.

At my age, I don't care what other people do. I'm just going to do what I like to do, and I'm not going to try to be a good machine quilter. I just mess around with my fabric. I have two rooms full of fabrics. I don't really need to buy any more fabrics, but I do it for mental therapy and as an outlet. I have a couple of outlets---I like reading books. And I still hang on to that---messing around with my fabrics, is what I tell my friends.

What they're doing now with sewing machines is so much beyond what I had. But it was fun. It has always been interesting and fun for me. I was in on the revival of this whole thing. It's not over---it's still going strong. But I was in on the ground floor.