Hiding the (Fabric) Stash: Collecting, Hoarding, and Hiding Strategies of Contemporary US Quilters

Abstract

In this four-year, seventy-interview ethnographic study of US amateur quilters, I examine the guilty pleasures surrounding quilting practices, including the deviant acts of hiding both identity and fabric from family members and friends. While fabric is the medium of quilting, quilters purchase more than necessary for projects, slowly building up and hoarding a fabric stash. They then strategize hiding places for their fabric. Women's anxieties surrounding acquiring, hoarding, and hiding their fabric stashes highlight their diminished ability, relative to their spouses and their children, to pursue leisure activities without a stigma. Collecting and hiding the fabric stash become symbolic of women's attempts to carve out time ad space for themselves amid the multiple demands placed on them by such greedy institutions such as family and the workplace.