Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Pbs (Direct)
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00004R8UP
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,105 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Video to Wrap up in - Very Touching and Warm, September 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: America Quilts [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Enter the warm world of fellowship with women and their stories through their quilts and quilt history. Meet the women who now create beautiful quilts and remember those who used to live and now live with us through their creations. Explore the world of design and color, skill and craft along with attending two of the world's largest and most popular quilting shows. This video is so warm, I am buying it for my mother for her birthday. My mother, who is aging, lovely, and quilts.

5.0 out of 5 stars quilts, November 25, 2011

By 

royski - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: American Quilts (DVD)

excellent program. well photographed with detailed close ups. if you're considering this dvd, order "a century of quilts" at the same time.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely, but for the Pottery Barn Type, November 15, 2008

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Quilts (DVD)

If this were a paragraph, the main sentence came in the middle of it. A quilting conference organizer says, "I started this event because I had seen one too many quilts being covering for oily, broken car parts or being used for the family dog to give birth upon." This work is meant to remind people that quilting is an art and a wonderful means of self-expression that American women have been doing for centuries.

There are some really astonishing facts here. One woman owns a quilt that an ancestor from 175 years ago made. Quilts were a means for pioneer women to describe their fear and excitement about traveling to the frontier. They showed modern women using the Beatles and "Little Shop of Horrors" as themes for today's quilts. Still, if you are convinced that quilts are beautiful expressions and take a lot of energy to make, then this documentary is a long, slow preaching to the choir.

I have to be very honest that I was not the target audience for this work. This work both interviewed and seemed to be speaking to middle-aged women, most often from rural areas and most often of European ancestry. The women featured here are the types that watch Martha Stewart and would shop at Pier 1 Imports. So granted, if I were a housewife type who was trying to find a hobby, then maybe I'd be grooving to this a bit more.

The work does talk about history, but I still think two large components are missing here. It's great that women from the 1800s made these beautiful quilts and we can see them now, but there's no mention that modern women have TVs and step aerobics classes and blogging. The demise of quilting may be because women have far more ways to entertain themselves now. I once asked a co-worker, "Are you going to make a quilt for your grandchild if either of your children tells you they are expecting?" She replied, "No! I'm going to go to the mall and buy whatever quilt I like and hand it to them." The demise of quilting may happen because covers can be so easily mass-produced nowadays.

The work does show two women of European ancestry that sewed African and Native American themes into their quilts, but they do not show a single quilter of color. Womanist author bell hooks has written about quilts and how the role Black women played in making them often goes unnoticed. Now remember in "How to Make an American Quilt," the producers choose renowned poet Maya Angelou to be a part of the quilting bee. DON'T GET ME WRONG!: I'm an not accusing this work of oppression. I do wonder if Black women in the past made more "crazy quilts." Maybe it was the necessity for warmth and the need to re-use old cloth that explains their quilting. The women in this documentary seemed class-privileged, if not super rich. Perhaps many women of color have too many demands on their time to be quilting for the fun of it.

This work never mentions what I think of as the most famous quilt: the AIDS Memorial Quilt(s). There is only one male quilter shown here, and I don't doubt they make a minority of quilters. The work says it's 80 minutes long, but the last 20 minutes are just a slideshow of quilts without the creators present.

I have a quilt in my closet that my step-grandmother who died in 1999 made. I think I will hug it tight (and maybe get it professionally washed) after watching this work.