| QUILTER PROFILE: Jo and Jos Hindriks
 When Jo and Jos
Hindriks arrived in the U.S. from the Netherlands, their
first acquaintance was quilting. Jos (the male component
of this quilting couple) writes: "In early 1994 we
arrived in Washington D.C., where Jo had accepted a job
as an economist. That summer, we decided to spend our
vacation up north in Maine, for we both like to hike in
the woods and mountains. Our first night was spent at a
Bed & Breakfast hotel in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, where we had planned to receive a
first-hand impression of the Amish and Mennonite
communities. Our interest, however, proved to be somewhat
more than casual. So we stayed another night, and
another.... In short, we never reached Maine that year.
That trip was a veritable 'quilt-immersion.' We both fell
for the geometrical designs and the striking color
combinations. It was in the small town of Intercourse,
right in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, that we
bought our first quiltmaking supplies: a cutting mat, a
rotary cutter, a ruler, quilting thread, fabrics. On the
porch of our Bed & Breakfast hotel we drafted our
first project, a single Log Cabin bedcover in Amish
purples. We still have that quilt and sometimes use it to
stay warm on the couch.
"A lot has happened since then. Our current home has
a separate sewing room in the basement and there are so
many needles all over the house that we hereby recommend
everyone who enters to keep their shoes on."
Some five years later Jo and Jos bill themselves on their
website (http://www.dutdes.com) as "The Dutch
Quilting Couple in America." Having become quilters
themselves and great admirers and students of the
quilter's craft, they have begun to make their own
original contributions.
Neither of them had a quilter in the family, though Jo
says that her mother did do some sewing: "I was
brought up in a family in which my mother made all of our
clothes when we were young. While she has a degree in
dressmaking, she never engaged in quiltmaking. She taught
me much of the sewing basics. I picked up the needle
again after my interest in quilts was aroused, in the
U.S. The term 'quilt' was new to me when we arrived
there."
Jos was introduced to the terminology, if not the
practice, somewhat earlier: "The English word
'patchwork' entered my vocabulary when I was nearly ten
years old, somewhere in the late Sixties. In those days,
textile crafts were hot again and my mother read in a
magazine about a technique to cut little hexagons out of
old postcards and use these as templates, nowadays often
referred to as 'English Paper Piecing.' Only much later
did I hear stories about American quilting bees, where
ladies would sit around a frame and sing together while
stitching the sandwich."
 Of quilting in Dutch
culture, Jos goes on to observe: "We were born in an
age when quilted bedcovers and jackets were generally
known as end-products of the textile industry and
patchwork was frowned upon as a sign of poverty. How
quickly we had forgotten that, until not so long ago,
stitched textiles used to be prized possessions in the
wealthy families of Western Europe and that both quilting
and patchwork can be traced back along the Silk Route,
all the way to ancient China. Our "Flying
Geese" have come a long way indeed.
"As to the less fortunate social strata throughout
the history of our society, we can only regret that
hardly any quilts or data on them have been preserved. We
think that this lack of evidence has to be ascribed to
the logical fact that such quilts were made to be 'used
up,' as well as to the scarcity of inventory lists of
poor households. Therefore, it is no surprise that, to
denote their workpieces, contemporary Dutch quilters use
the English loan word 'quilt' and have forgotten the old
Dutch word 'culte,' which is directly related to it and
carried the meaning of either 'mattress' or 'stitched
bedcover.' Nor is it too strange that both of us became
more closely familiar with the craft only after we had
moved to the United States, where quiltmaking has never
vanished altogether from everyday life."
Jo and Jos do not like to put labels on their own style
of quilting. "Labels like 'traditional,'
'innovative,' 'art' and 'craft' mean little to us. We
draw our inspiration from everything that captures our
attention, both inside and outside the realm of
quiltmaking. Our creativity is stirred by visits to art
museums, walks in the forest, encounters with friends. We
have come across many antique quilts of which the design,
as quilt historian Jonathan Holstein points out in his
writings, anticipate twentieth-century artistic currents
like Cubism, Constructivism and Op Art. Classifying
designs into categories inhibits the creative process and
induces copycatting. We believe that our own designs,
which are nothing but new discoveries of age-old
principles, can find a happy home in any quilt."
One primary source of inspiration for the couple is
puzzles, which have had a fascination for Jos going back
to his childhood. "When I was a young boy, my father
got a little puzzle for his birthday. It looked like a
jig saw puzzle, with the main differences that it did not
have a picture on it and that the pieces could fit into
the case in more than one way. I took delight in finding
solutions with the geometrical forms and soon the
collection expanded with similar puzzles (called
Polyforms). They have been with me ever since. Sometimes
I forgot them for a while, then picked them up again.
"In more recent years, I started pondering their
decorative value. Being a subtle balancing act of order
and chaos, they kept on captivating my eye. I pictured
their solutions as stained-glass windows, tile floors and
the like. During the very night after our return from our
first American vacation, I suddenly saw my puzzles before
me as quilt tops and discussed the concept with Jo. I
realized that they could bring a fresh, new design
element which is, at the same time, readily accessible to
the average quilter as to sewing techniques and choice of
fabrics. Selecting a set of colors for a puzzle quilt and
sewing the solutions requires essentially the same
approach as selecting a set of colors for a block sampler
and assembling the different blocks: the intriguing
interplay of order and chaos is apparent in both. In
fact, the puzzle solutions quite naturally fit into what
are described as traditional quilt designs."
In developing his ideas, Jos uses a computer design
program, but not dedicated quilt design software.
"My designs usually start their careers as ideas. As
they are transferred to the computer, their evolution is
still in progress and I often make adjustments on the
screen. I usually draw my patterns in AutoCAD LT, a very
precise program primarily targeted to engineers and
architects. Those who are interested in what AutoCAD can
do for quilters are welcome to read my introductory
article "Quiltmaking and AutoCAD LT Drafting
Software", hosted by the Computer Quilting Made Easy
website (at http://softexpressions.com/help/newsletters/apr99autocad.html
)."
Jo picked up on Jos's ideas and began to bring some of
them into reality: "From the very beginning I was
intrigued with applying the puzzles to quilt designs. I
started with a very simple pillow cover, to experiment
with the sewing techniques. This pillow we later gave to
an Amish family whom we had befriended during our stays
in Lancaster County, PA. The more designs Jos made, the
more I became fascinated with both the design aspect and
the piecing techniques. I experimented with traditional
and new piecing and applique techniques and came to
realize how easy his designs can be done by just applying
simple sewing basics: no curves, straight lines, with an
occasional inset piece."
The Hindriks' began to share their puzzle and quilt ideas
with the rest of the world through their website and
e-mail newsletter. "We got hooked up to the Internet
in early 1997 and met fellow quilters online. Soon after
that, we had our first 'Uncle Jaws' Mystery Quilt (with a
mystery story) hosted by the Quilttalk website (http://www.quilttalk.com
). Acknowledging the powers of the Internet, we put up
our own Dutchman Designs page (currently at http://www.dutdes.com )
a few months after signing on. There, we shared our
design concepts with the quilting public. Our site now
features three 'Uncle Jaws' Mysteries, including that
first one, as well as a growing number of other
designs."
Eventually, with the collaboration of his internet
acquaintances, Jos evolved his puzzle patterns into a
business: "Through ample feedback from visitors, I
was able to hone my pattern writing skills. The pattern
business, formally established in January of this year,
has evolved from the website in a natural way. Jo's
invaluable skills as an economist have helped overcome
many of the practical hurdles. Dutchman Designs is a
bipartite website now, with a cost-free section and a
commercial section. My first three printed patterns for
sale are of the 'Puzzling Patterns' type, meaning that
they are based on solutions of the aforementioned
puzzles. Our latest title is 'Checkered Copycats,' based
on the same design of tessellated (interlocking) cats as
the outcome of our last Mystery, 'Uncle Jaws and the
Escapee.'
"We both are quite active on the Internet. We
participate in some mailing lists and visit chatrooms on
IRC. The Internet has given us ways of communication that
a regular storefront cannot provide, especially in our
field of creativity: pattern writing. In our vision, one
of the major boons of the Internet is the direct
availability of communication to isolated people. Many
individuals who have, for some reason or other,
previously been unable to go out often and meet others,
now actively exchange ideas and build new
friendships."
Despite their mention of isolation, Jo and Jos are not
hermits, and participate actively in quilting activities
in their Virginia neighborhood. "We are members of
the Burke Chapter of Quilters Unlimited (QU, located at http://www.clark.net/pub/quilters
), a guild based in Northern Virginia and counting about
twelve hundred souls. Our annual quilt show in early
Spring is well worth visiting, the more so because it is
non-competitive. Instead of feeling compelled to measure
their skills with others, the quilters can freely share
their experiences and appreciate the fruits of everyone's
labor. Occasionally, we enter projects of ours in the QU
show."
Although the Hindriks' are now thoroughly acculturated in
the U.S., they are often asked about the connections
between American and Dutch quilting traditions. As Jos
puts it "There are striking parallels between Dutch,
English and American quiltmaking traditions. Some
mid-nineteenth-century patchwork 'Log Cabin' quilts from
Holland could easily be taken for pre-Civil-War pieces
and Pinwheel-like motifs are known in our home country as
'Dutch Triangles.' The American quilting boom of the last
few decades has greatly contributed to bridging the
generations by renewing the interest in the centuries-old
craft in Holland.
"Although we are not deeply involved in specifically
Dutch quilting circles or cross-cultural activities, we
do have regular contact with individual Dutch quilters.
Through them we discovered that the Dutch tradition has
preserved some distinctive traits, such as certain fabric
designs. A number of textile industries are now
reproducing calico prints that were popular in the
Netherlands during the heyday of Dutch trade and culture:
the Seventeenth Century."
Gregarious and generous, Jo and Jos Hindriks are anxious
to share their ideas, their patterns, and their love of
quilting with anyone who is interested. From their unique
cross-cultural perspective, they are able to bring
together elements of the decorative tradition which have
not been combined in quite these ways before. And with
the internet, they have the ideal platform from which to
share their insights with the rest of us.
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