Quilters don’t let vision problems stop them from creating

By Michelle Hiskey

For the AJC

Tiny cones in our eyeballs help us to see colors, to distinguish blue from brown, pink from yellow. Over time, experiences can infuse each of those colors with feelings. Think, for instance, of the bright reds and greens of the holidays.

For a group of local quilters, though, those cones are no longer enough. Instead, spools of thread and bolts of fabric help these blind and vision-impaired women connect with the evocative world of color.

Every Monday, they meet to make quilts of vivid hues seen almost entirely in their imaginations alone, guided by touch and perception, imbuing each with an extra layer of meaning.

“I was just really feeling an Indian print that I picked out for my next [set] of pillows,” said Kay Jordan of Atlanta, 47, who has diabetic retinopathy, a vision disease. “I feel it when I’m clothes shopping and I’m like that with lip colors. I can feel it, and I just know, ‘Yes, this is it.’ ”

Volunteers like Lynn Daniel, 58, use feelings and sensations to connect the women with the fabric they choose.

To convey color, “I use feeling or touch senses like hot, cold, warm, jazzy, excited, quiet, gentle, soft,” Daniel said.

The weekly 90-minute sewing circle, at the Center for the Visually Impaired in Midtown, gathers stitches and outlooks.

“I used to take up a lot of time not accepting the fact that I had vision problems,” said Jewell Madison-Bell, 59, of Decatur, who lost her vision gradually from optic atrophy, a congenital disease. “All that is a waste of time.”

She works with bright or dark colors, because she no longer remembers what beige, pinks and other light colors look like. She’s fine with that, she says.

“When this really comes together, it’s a sense of accomplishment,” she said. “You can say that’s yours.”

Seeing, feeling red

By the time doctors diagnosed Lola Kirkland’s kidney problems, the sight in her right eye was gone. Her left eye, at 30 percent, now sees colors brighter.

“This is my favorite color: red,” she said of her first quilt, for her grandson.

Through sewing, Kirkland, 53, shifted from depression to “feeling happy to have what vision I have left.” She hopes to one day sell her work and use the money toward a kidney transplant.

“Color and mood go hand in hand,” noted Empish Thomas, 39, a public education and referral specialist for the center. She is blind from uveitis, an eye disease that struck while she was in art school.

“There is an inner drive to recapture as much as you had before [losing sight], like colors. You know you have limitations, big time. What can I still do that will validate me? To make me feel proud, so I can feel more ‘normal?’ ”

Touching tones

Kay Jordan selects earth tones of rust and tan, to soothe her from daily stress. Vexations like near-misses while crossing streets, or people talking loudly to her, thinking she is also deaf.

“Before I lost my sight, I was considered touchy-feely,” she said. “So touching [cloth] is important to me.”

Louise Walker, 64, of Atlanta, beams over the yellow blocks she’s just put into her design.

“That will add movement to your quilt,” said volunteer Jennifer Leavey.

“I think it will too,” Walker said.

Change is OK in creating art, but Walker is hoping for stability in her sight.

She can see some colors but can’t discern printed fabrics after 10 years of diabetic retinopathy. How long this condition will last is uncertain.

Still, she has learned to laugh at her color faux pas, like the mismatched shoes she once wore.

Like a multilayered quilt, under that humor is acceptance, and determination: “I’m not giving up,” she said. “I keep a positive attitude. I think quilting is part of that.”

Coloring attitudes

“This is gold with green in it,” said Mary Brewington, 62, describing her handwork.

She had planned to quilt in her retirement, and despite going blind just six months after she left the working world, stayed on track. She even devised a method to thread her own needles.

“If I’m breathing, I can get up in the morning and I have friends, all is never lost,” she said. “I don’t believe in dwelling on the negative if you can make something positive about it.”

These quilters’ attitudes have influenced their sighted helpers.

“I am less inclined about matching colors in my own quilts,” Leavey said. “I’ve learned from them to pick what you like.”

Gladys Taylor of Decatur was wearing a blue and red plaid dress the day she lost her perfect vision. At 15, she was shot in the face by her mom’s boyfriend.

Now, 51 years later, color lights up her darkness.

“The nerves in my eyes are still there,” she said. “I see some blue things dancing around, and in the background a lighter blue, like the sky all the time. ... When I am in a happy mood, those are very bright. If I’m upset, they are dark.”

She worked on a pillow cover to match her finished quilt. Her fingers are sure, nimble from a childhood of making quilts out of need.

“We used what we had,” she said. She still does.

Making connections

Lioba Grimm, 79, of Brookhaven, suffered strokes that disabled her optic nerves. She’s left behind the dark colors she knew so well when she sewed linings into fur coats.

“Lavender’s my favorite. I have to stay in pastels,” she said. “Navy blue, black, brown — I have no feelings for those colors. That’s dead now.”

Threading needles nearby, volunteer Jim Stovall — a longtime weaver of original fabric — admires Grimm’s palette.

“That’s the core of the quiltmaker’s art, regardless of sightedness of the maker: to see the transformation of a pile of fabrics that don’t appear to have any connection to another, or seemingly little,” he said. “Yet once assembled, all hold hands and come together.”

Center for the Visually Impaired

The center in Midtown Atlanta offers a variety of services for blind or visually impaired people of all ages, including classes and training, support groups and vision services. It is located at 739 West Peachtree St. N.W. 404-875-9011, www.cviga.org.