INTRODUCTION TO THIS BLOG

Back in the mists of time, as a historical re-enactor, I was struggling to get the A&S (Arts & Science) community of the Middle Kingdom (Mid Realm of the SCA - http://midrealm.org/) to accept that patchwork and hand quilting are not an American invention, but had a proven history back hundreds if not thousands of years.

My research paper continues to grow and evolve as more info is located and what will end up here is pretty bare bones compared to the paper, but hopefully it will give resources for others to use for their own research. As more and more storage areas in museums and archives are opened and catalogued the amount of available info on historical quilting is growing. There is certainly more info available than when I started this research back in 2000.

The East Kingdom (https://eastkingdom.org/) had a history of acknowledging that hand quilting and patchwork were a period craft and skill. However,  considering that the Middle and East Kingdoms have a long history of animosity toward each other, telling the Mid Realm judges and/or A&S community that the East Kingdom recognized anything was not a great idea.

My first (and to date) only attempt to put a small quilted item in an A&S faire https://www.sca.org/officers/arts/resources.html was met with harsh and non-constructive comments by the judges. One actually noted across my documentation cover that I had "made up own sources - quilting is American". It saddened me that they would not even read my documentation, but it also resulted in hurt feelings and anger.  It made me more stubborn to prove my point.

Certain people within the Middle Kingdom were watching my struggle with this topic. Eventually my struggle to get the A&S folks to pay attention was heard of by our then ruler, King Pieter, who realized in his great wisdom that something had to be done about this particular situation within the kingdom.  So at an event in southern Indiana, he presented me with a beautiful scroll, but more then that, he entrusted me with a Quest - to prove beyond a doubt to those "A&S police" that quilting and patchwork were medieval period arts.

As many people within the re-enacting world find, real (or mundane) life does interfere with our being able to attend events, or even with how much behind the scenes work and research we can do for our public persona in the SCA.  I had several years since being sent on my quest that I could not get to events due to work schedules, but I am slowly getting back into the swing of re-enacting.  My research never stopped.

I have so much information to share, and would rather be quilting or researching than posting on a blog.  However, I feel that I need to share my work and information in a more public way than simply as a research paper to the A&S circuit in Mid Realm (which would probably disappear into wherever research papers go, to never see the light of day again).  Quilting in its many forms has a much longer history than anything "American", and my goal is to prove that to anyone else searching for the truth about this topic.


Thank you,

Lady Elspeth Nadel - CW **

**Companion of the Order of the Willow, an SCA award given by the crown to those who have shown proficiency in the arts (in my case, specifically in researching quilts and quilting, and in quilting itself). See http://middlewiki.midrealm.org/index.php/Willow