Quilts Are Back in Style--and It’s Not So Crazy

When she moved to California from New England 11 years ago, professional quilt maker Karen Turgeon worried she’d soon be out of a job.

“I didn’t know how quilts would work out here with all these modern homes,” she says. “But when I started looking at the architecture with all the soaring ceilings, high walls and long hallways, I realized quilts would work very well.”

Fortunately for Turgeon, many interior designers and home decorators realized the same thing and have gone crazy over quilts. Not only do they show them off on beds, they hang them on walls and drape them over furniture.

“A lot of decorators say to use them for dining room tablecloths, but I can’t see a circle of red wine on a beautiful quilt,” Turgeon says. She had no such qualms, however, about making a quilt to cover a grand piano.

More than a bedspread, the quilt has achieved the status of fine art. American pioneers who first fashioned quilts out of material scraps to keep warm in winter would pop their stitches if they could see how decorators now hang quilts in living rooms under studio lighting.

“It’s like bringing a painting into your room,” Turgeon says. “A quilt can pull together all your colors.”

Turgeon finds no shortage of buyers for her custom quilts, which she stitches by hand out of her home in Laguna Hills under the name Peaceable Kingdom Quilts.

She’s even found her Orange County clients to be more picky about their quilts than the folks back in New England.

“Color is very big here,” she says. “Everyone wants everything to be color-coordinated. Back East if your grandmother gave you an ugly quilt and the colors were wrong, you used it anyway. Out here, you fold it up and stuff it in the closet.”

For home decorators, not just any old quilt will do. They want one tailor-made to blend in with their decor.

“They’ll show me a wall and say, ‘It has to fit this space and color.’ Quilts are wonderful for that. They can be any size or design,” Turgeon says.

Quilts can adapt to everything from a country to a contemporary look. Traditional patterns such as the log cabin, schoolhouse and grandmother’s flower garden go well in country homes, but the old patterns can also brighten modern rooms if one substitutes solid-colored fabrics for quaint pastel prints.

“Not all quilts are ruffly and cute,” Turgeon says. “Some work well with modern furniture, especially those with geometric patterns.

“I work in Amish quilts a lot. They’re very graphic and made with mostly solid, dark colors. They look great with our white walls.”

While many consider quilts to be timeless, they do follow trends. When mauve and slate blue began turning up on everything from carpeting to Tupperware, quilt makers picked up on the colors as well.

“We do have to keep up with what’s in fashion,” says Martha Faghani, manager of The Gazebo of New York in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza.

Faghani, who helps design the handmade quilts carried by Gazebo, has noticed that an increasing number of them feature dark colors. One, for example, has a sunburst in shades of solid blue against a plain white background.

“There are a lot of elegant, sophisticated quilts that have a lot of white space. They go well in modern homes,” Faghani says.

At Piecemakers Country Store in Costa Mesa, quilt makers constantly design new patterns to keep up with the times.

“Twenty years ago you never saw a coyote on a quilt,” says Janet McDonald, who makes hand-stitched quilts for Piecemakers.

“We noticed a lot of things going Southwest in decorating, so we started using that (theme) in the quilts.”

One Southwest-style quilt has an appliqued panel of Indian pottery and feathers done in hues of purple and peach.

Unlike store-bought comforters, custom quilts can reflect the tastes and personality of their owners.

One woman approached Piecemakers with a postcard that showed a quilt dating from the 1880s. The quilt had an intricate pattern of appliqued bows and flowers, and the customer wanted an identical one for her home. The quilt makers obliged, enlarging the photograph so they could copy the pattern to perfection.

Another customer brought in all the T-shirts he’d won in marathons to have them sewn up in a quilt.

Custom quilts cost $500 to $1,500, depending on their size and the intricacy of the hand-stitching.

“That’s a big investment,” Turgeon says. “When (customers) decide they want a quilt, it’s got to be special.”

Quilt makers usually sew the pieces of fabric together by machine, then sew all the tiny top stitches or quilting by hand--a time-consuming task. Turgeon might spend four to six months on a single king-size quilt.

“My husband will ask me, ‘How much money do you think you’re making on that quilt an hour?’ I tell him I don’t do it for the money, I do it for the joy of making something beautiful and useful.” She does make money on her simpler bedspreads and pillows.

Many others have also discovered the joy of quilting. The Orange County Quilters Guild has seen its ranks multiply with people wanting to learn how to make quilts.

“We have a limit of 400 members, and there’s a waiting list of people to get in,” says Thayone Jones of Brea, second vice president of the guild.

Many people want quilts but don’t have the time to make their own. Neighborhood quilting bees have all but disappeared, replaced by custom quilt manufacturers.

Piecemakers farms out its quilting to people who sew out of their homes, and the Gazebo has its quilts assembled and stitched in Haiti. Quilt makers say their customers pay for the labor because they appreciate the craftsmanship.

“Quilts are both a visual and tactile treat,” Faghani says. “They’re pretty, they have interesting patterns and they feel good.”

Some attribute the rising popularity of quilts to a longing for the simpler things like home and hearth.

“There’s something about a handmade quilt that turns a house into a home,” says Marie Kolasinski of Piecemakers. “They just warm up the place. There’s nothing cold or sterile about them. It’s much different than if you buy something from a factory.”

Turgeon, too, says people want things that have not been churned out by machine, things that take time to make and don’t fall out of fashion.

“Our society is very fast,” Turgeon says. “It’s built on planned obsolescence. Quilts are built to last.”

For many of her clients, quilts represent a return to their roots.

“I had one great big construction worker come into my former shop in Laguna Beach. His grandmother made a quilt with a double wedding ring (pattern) that was lost, and he wanted one just like it. He must have come back eight or 10 times to make sure it was exactly like his grandmother’s.”

Despite the growing designer status quilts have attained, they’re still used as grandmother intended.

“There’s nothing to match a quilt for coziness,” Turgeon says. “Quilts bring warmth. You can cuddle up with them on a crummy night.”

But first, you’ll have to take them off the wall.