Quilts

"When I go to sleep at night,I'm safe as I can beBecause my guardian angelIs watching over me."For Rebecca Russenberger, 10, those words became the centerpiece of a quilt, bordered with angels. Rebecca attached a guardian angel pin to the coverlet before she gave it to a needy baby."Angels really do watch," said Rebecca, one of 10 youngsters who batted, basted and stitched patches into coverlets during Quilts for Love 1994.Each quilt started with a 12-by-12-inch square and ended more than 100 hours of labor later as one of 11 gifts to babies at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.

Whether you are an accomplished seamstress or a neophyte, volunteers are welcome to join the fourth annual Quilt for Charity tomorrow at Calvary United Methodist Church in Gamber. "You don't have to be a quilter to help," said Genie Corbin, who helped found the Calvary Quilters about a decade ago. "People with no experience can help." Those who do not sew can iron fabric pieces and finish the quilts by tying layers together. "You have to tie about every 5 inches," Corbin said. "It would be a valuable, time-consuming service."

Though the quilters themselves may be unaware of it, contemporary African-American quilts often involve designs and techniques that have distinctively African roots.Maude Southwell Wahlman, guest curator of a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art, has assembled more than 20 quilts and textiles from Africa, the Caribbean and the Southern United States. The show traces the quilts' heritage and illustrates the characteristics that distinguish them from their Anglo-American counterparts.

Appalachia has been America's definitive down-and-out spot for as long as any of us can remember. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority was going to resuscitate the region by damming its rivers and bringing the miracle of modern electrification to its citizens. President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty also was primed to unleash a pre-emptive strike on deprivation in the region. But for all such lofty intentions, Appalachia today still conjures up troubling images of want amid plenty, which is why I found it so interesting to view "American Hollow," a touring exhibition of powerful photos and quilts on display at the AIR Gallery on the main floor of Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis.

7/8 TC Peggy Smith, an art teacher at Broadneck Elementary School, never expected such an enthusiastic response to her idea of getting students to make quilts for babies with the AIDS virus.But about 40 fifth-graders have been giving up their recess periods several days a week to come to Ms. Smith's class room to work on small quilts for babies in the University of Maryland Medical System Pediatric AIDS Program."They were so excited about it, and they are really working hard," Ms. Smith said.

Catherine M. Smith, an antiques dealer who collected and sold heirloom quilts, died Monday of ventricular arrhythmia at Anne Arundel Medical Center. The Arnold resident was 71. She was born Catherine Marie Gray in Kansas City, Mo., and was raised in St. Louis. She attended Saint Louis University and Anne Arundel Community College. "She never graduated from grade school, high school or college," said her husband of 51 years, Terry C. Smith, who was a student at what is now Parks College of Saint Louis University, where he met his future wife at a tea dance.

There were no labels on the quilts. No "Made by the ladies of St. Michael Lutheran Church in Perry Hall." No "Sewn by Agnes" or "Knotted by Elaine." No embroidered initials of the 13 women whose lined and spotted hands had produced these patchwork gifts for strangers. Last year, 150 quilts wrapped in weatherproof plastic were loaded onto a container ship and sent across the ocean. When the ship reached shore and the quilts were distributed, the men and women who received them would know only what they could see: simple designs, eclectic blends of fabric, machine-sewn stitches and hand-tied knots of yarn.

The little crowd presses close to the man with the list. He calls out the first name and a frisson of eagerness, of expectation and even hope roils from one to another, women wearing layers of mismatched castoffs, men in tattered caps and suits worn long past respectability, children in anything that fits. Hands reach upward, to the back of the truck, to the outstretched arms passing out small piles of quilts. They reach up in desperation and yearning. The long journey is at an end. Some of the quilts stitched in Perry Hall by the women of St. Michael Lutheran Church have reached their destination, 7,000 miles away, in the Muslim country of Azerbaijan.

TWENTY-FIVE handmade quilts adorn the walls of the central library this month. Library shelves serve as display tables for hand-crocheted baby blankets and hats. Most of the quilts are in bright colors, some with images of baby animals, some in traditional Amish patterns, and others showing Spiderman and other characters beloved by children. Some are more unusual -- decorated with heartfelt poetry and messages from mothers to their children and children to their mothers. All were made by women prisoners.

How differently works of art can be viewed, depending on the beholder's perspective.Today, quilts are seen not only as beautiful works of art, but as one of the few ways in which 19th century women could express themselves, confined as they were to domestic life. The women's suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, however, looked down on quilts as primary symbols of "woman's unpaid subjection."So we learn from "Four Quilts From the Collection" at the Baltimore Museum of Art (through Jan. 26)