"Where Love Resides"
Ellen Burstyn &
Anne Bancroft
For many years before I wrote the book, I was drawn to quilts and quilting. Not the ginghamy, homespun quilts that are used for interior decorating and nothing more. No, I loved the ones that capture the artistry (both fine and native), skill, lives, and desires of the women who stitched them. The sort of quilts that, with very little fanfare, quietly engage the heart. The sort of quilt that I longed to make. However, I did not know any quilters, nor had I ever sat in on a quilting bee. Most importantly, I did not know how to sew.
But I did know how to write.
Around 1981 I started a short story that ultimately became the novel "How to Make an American Quilt." My writing had always taken on a "collage" or patchwork structure. I realized that a quilting bee was a good way to tell the stories of eight women who had gathered to make a wedding quilt for a granddaughter who had come to spend a hot, airless California summer in their small town. I allocated one square -- and one chapter -- per character.
At first I thought I was simply laying out a writing exercise for myself, using the patchwork structure as a task, until I stumbled upon one of those mysterious and fortunate moments: A story found me -- the story of these eight quilters -- instead of my pursuing the story. Writing fiction is often made up of longing and love, which means that what a fiction writer writes about is frequently something that has been on her mind a very long time; in this case, it was my almost-forgotten desire to make a quilt. A quilt of words, if not of fabric.
When my novel was published -- another fortunate, unexpected event in my life (it was, after all, my first novel) -- I treated myself to a blue-and-white crib quilt. It was made in the 1920's and depicted the tale of Peter Pan with blue embroidery thread. I was later told this is referred to as blue work When I wrote "Quilt," a novel that ruminates on the vagaries of marriage, I was unmarried; when I bought this crib quilt, I was not yet the mother of the baby in whose room it now hangs. Yet I liked this little quilt for the way it transformed words into fabric, the way it turned a child's story into a child's quilt.
Then Steven Spielberg bought the movie rights to my novel and my real immersion into quilting began. Prior to "Quilt," I had done enough research to create an impressionistic set of quilts. This approach, which lets the reader imagine the details, can succeed on page, but film is more exact. So this question arose: How would my "written" quilts become real?
The task of making this translation-from words on paper to painted renderings to color and cloth-fell to the movie's art department and to Patty McCormick, a quilting consultant. Patty chose and organized the women who would actually make the quilts (affectionately known on the set as "the Stunt Quilters"). She selected fabrics and served as a double for the quilters' hands during the filming. She also explained a little of the philosophy, the personality, and the importance of measurements and balance to quilters and quilting.
For example, somewhere between my book and the screenplay a quilter had been "lost." My cast of eight women had been cut to seven, a change I understood. However the wedding quilt, "Where Love Resides", which is the centerpiece quilt of the film, couldn't have seven pictorial squares. Quilts have a symmetry to them; the "missing" quilter disrupted the balance. Patty's solution was to "invent" a phantom quilter, allowing her representation in the quilt.
"Where Love Resides" is done as a Baltimore Album-style quilt, traditionally a friendship quilt often made to honor a wedding or a birth by a group of women. Since the men in the art department were not quilters, some of their ideas were either impractical or incorrect. They sketched tiny circles and skinny lines too difficult to execute in fabric; a family home appeared graceful on paper but looked more like a prison when made into a quilt block; a mermaid required a little more modesty. Then there was the matter of my impressionistic quilts. It turned out that it was just as well that my quilts were less than exact, allowing Patty more room for interpretation. Nothing seemed to trouble her as she restored the "prison" to its former grandeur and fine tuned the art department's images.
When I first saw "Where Love Resides," I experienced a small ache in my heart. I didn't want to talk; I wanted only to touch and caress and examine this truly gorgeous quilt that reflected my characters and their imagined lives. Since Patty was standing next to me, I made all the expected sounds, spoke all the excited words. She then showed me the backside of the quilt. In the upper-left-hand corner it read: "Presented to Finn and Sam in honor of their wedding," followed by the names of all the women who had worked on the quilt. My characters. The small ache in my heart expanded slightly. As the inventor of these California women and teller of their tales, I felt a very private moment of unexpected love for them. It was as if they suddenly existed outside of me, more as "people" and less as writerly abstractions.
The next time I saw "Where Love Resides," it was wrapped around a sleeping Winona Ryder, who plays the character of Finn.
Patty was asked to teach the actresses the basics of quilting. She taught them individually, since they all had varying experience and skill; and she taught them in a large group, since this is how they would quilt in the film.
It is amazing and wonderful how like the characters the actresses were when it came to the quilting.
Ellen Burstyn was precise; Jean Simmons was a little clumsy, but full of good cheer (when quilting alone, she liked to watch "Jeopardy"); Lois Smith took to it immediately, spending extra time quilting when not in the group; Alfre Woodard was all thumbs (lending a believability to her character's block); Maya Angelou was an experienced quilter who often sang or hummed and was referred to as "The Quilter Laureate"; Kate Nelligan didn't take private lessons, had minimal interest in sewing, and kept everyone laughing with her joking. Anne Bancroft was creative and enthusiastic. She told me that the reason she took this part was so she could finish a white-on-white quilt she had been working on since the filming of "84 Charing Cross Road." The quilt now covers a bed in her guest room.
Once Anne asked Patty for a bit of material to cover a small tear she had in a silk coat. She picked out a piece with a tiny orange tree on it. In the process of mending, the patch expanded beyond the orange tree to include sky, grass, a horse, and a little car parked in a little driveway.
As I watched them filming the group quilting scenes, I marveled at the seeming ease with which the actresses slipped into this world of quilting: a place of camaraderie, deep loyalty, conflict, and love for an art that can be created out of disparate lives. They made it all seem so real, as if they had been a community of quilters for a very long time, and, on this day, someone had decided to capture them on camera. Some novels are acknowledged to be based on fact, just thinly veiled versions of the authors' lives. This is not true in the case of "Quilt": My novel was based on air, on a dream, on a notion.
I am being given a quilt from the movie. They are sending me "Where Love Resides." Quilts should be admired, handled, and, of course, loved. They should record where we've been and where we're going. They should say something about us and about the world. They should be as enigmatic and accessible as all good art. That is what I tried to say in my book.
So when I think about this unexpected, wonderful gift of "Where Love Resides," so many things come back in a rush: the almost chance beginnings of my novel; the thrill at finding the Peter Pan quilt; how breathless I felt the first time I saw "Where Love Resides"; and finally the image of Winona Ryder slumbering under a quilt that is meant to carry the wish for a marriage of love and friendship. I finally know what I longed to learn so many years ago: how to make an American quilt.
Whitney Otto's latest novel is "Now You See Her" (Ballantine)
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"Where Love Resides" |
Ellen Burstyn & Anne Bancroft |