Quilters Surge to 27 Million
Not the Same Old Pattern for This $3.3 Billion Industry If you are familiar with the terms selvage, matchpoint, and stitch in the ditch, you are among the growing numbers of Americans quilting. Once considered a lost art, new techniques, and technologies have re-energized the medium and brought nearly 14 million to the pastime in the last ten years. In fact, according to the 2006 Quilting in America(TM) survey, 17 percent of all U.S. households report at least one family member who participates in quilting.
The Quilting in America(TM) 2006 survey has been conducted triennially since 1994 and was commissioned by Quilts, Inc. and ckMedia, publishers of Quilter’s Magazine.
The survey revealed that the average dedicated quilter is a 59-year-old woman with a college education and a median household income of more than $87,000. She has been quilting for an average of 13.5 years and enjoys both traditional and contemporary styles.
Havlan has been quilting for more than 18 years. With what’s now a full time hobby, she, like most quilters, has a room dedicated to sewing, quilting and crafting. Havlan owns four sewing machines and subscribes to four quilting magazines. She’s teaching the craft to her granddaughter who, at age eight, completed her first quilt.
Havlan was taught that quilts were for warmth and comfort. Today, her quilts may provide warmth and comfort but they are much more likely to be hung on a wall than laid on a bed.
No stranger to quilt exhibits, Havlan has several quilts featured in the upcoming International Quilt Festival-Chicago. This event is the spring edition of the world’s largest annual quilt show, sale, and quiltmaking academy. Festival is expected to bring 20,000 aficionados from around the world to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. The annual show celebrates the love of one of America’s most popular art forms in one of America’s favorite cities.
International Quilt Festival, in its 33rd year, is part of an entire industry that has been patch worked together by millions of American quilters. According to the survey, most quilters have intermediate level skills, comprise 57 percent of the quilting community and spend 39 hours a month quilting.
“The survey provides very exciting news for me as a member of quilting’s artistic community,” says Quilts, Inc. president and fifth-generation Texas quilter Karey Bresenhan. “I just knew in my heart, looking at all that activity and all those quilters at the International Quilt Festivals in Chicago and Houston, that quilting was growing!
“Every year Festival has new classes that are literally bursting at the seams,” adds Bresenhan. “From collage applique to surface design with dyes and paint and image transfer and text, new techniques are popping up. The show offers free areas where beginner, intermediate and advanced quilters can watch artists create and sample new projects and techniques.”