The Role of Learning in Quilt Making

Abstract

Abstract During data collection for an ethnography of quilt making in North Carolina, learning was identified as one of the central activities of individuals and quilt guilds. This paper describes that learning in terms of its formal and informal characteristics as well as whether it is more or less social. Eight clusters of learning are developed: learning how to make a specific quilt, learning about tools and how to use them, learning aesthetics, learning how to make any quilt, learning to be part of the quilt making culture, learning that one is a quilt maker, and learning to stretch oneself. Many different structural elements of quilt making and quilt groups promote this learning, but taken as a whole the learning is socially situated. Wenger's (1998) concept of a “community of practice” is used as an explanatory frame for the quilt maker learners in this study. One conclusion is that learning is central to occupation, and may be a basic human need.