Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine
Comprehensive Cumulative Index
Foreword
by
Cuesta
Benberry
Quilters Hall of Fame Honoree
One may wonder why
twenty-nine years after the magazine’s end, a comprehensive cumulative
Index to Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine has been compiled.
Due to the astounding technological communication advances of
recent times, it is now de rigueur for large bodies of historical data to
be organized in a cohesive format for easy accessibility by scholars.
While the concept of indexing is not a new one, in the past most
often the technique was applied to subjects considered more in the realm
of the scholarly or of academe. Fortunately
today as a result of millennium-age thinking, quilt history has been
accorded the designation of being a scholarly subject.
Thus Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine with its early, almost
prophetic emphasis on recording quilt history topics is appropriate
material for indexing.
Within the past two and a half
decades the number of quilt history researchers has risen exponentially.
In this heretofore scantily investigated quilt history field of
study, innumerable scholars are now vigorously seeking information in
diverse avenues. Among the
multiplicity of sources consulted by the historians in their quest is the
out of print quilt periodical. And
so there is a demand for copies of Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine, out
of print since the mid-1970s.
Another compelling reason for
indexing the contents of Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine is the
periodical’s pioneer contributing role in that mid-20th
century phenomenon -the quilt magazine movement. During the first six decades of the 20th century,
few quilt books were published, and of those few, most quilt books were
out of print by the late 1950s. Almost
unheard of at the time were magazines solely devoted to the subject of
quilts. Fueled by a desire to
communicate with other quilters, there arose a grassroots movement – the
publication of so-called quilt magazines.
Those first efforts were home printed, frequently mimeographed,
essentially quilt pattern booklets, issued by various women and sold by
mail order subscriptions. The
program developed over a decade as the little publications that bore scant
resemblance to what we know today as quilt magazines were issued for
varying lengths of time. It was not until the late 1960s that the first authentic
quilt magazines were produced. And
it was at this point with the inauguration of Nimble Needle Treasures
Magazine, the threshold was crossed, resulting in an innovative
publication that rightly bore the appellation “a real quilt magazine.”
In fall 1969 Pat Almy
(Patricia Almy Randolph), Sapulpa, Oklahoma, edited and published the
initial issue of Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine.
Pat’s primary objective was to publish a true quilt magazine,
unlike the so-called quilt magazine booklets available during the previous
decade. It would be the
contents of her magazine that would distinguish it from its predecessors. She was determined that her quarterly periodical would be
professionally printed, and most certainly would not contain pages and
pages of unrelated quilt patterns. Instead
quilt patterns were to be placed in a meaningful context. Any quilt patterns printed were to be illustrative of
accompanying articles, or needed to be unified by a specific theme.
Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine featured quilt history essays,
articles written by regular columnists, quilt articles written from a
regional perspective, news accounts of current-to-that-time quilt events,
reports of important quilt collections, book reviews, quilt poems, quilt
exhibitions, state and county fair quilt displays, exchange and round
robin columns that fostered communication between like-minded quilters,
letters from readers, space for readers’ questions, and quilt-related
cross-word puzzles. In each
issue, Pat, the editor wrote a newsy, introductory open letter to her
readers entitled “Editor’s Notes.”
An array of quilt authors,
quilters, collectors, and designers contributed to Nimble Needle Treasures
Magazine. On its pages
appeared articles by writers whose by-lines were Dolores Hinson, Cuesta
Benberry, Maxine Teele, Letha Rice, Mary Borkowski, Hazel Carter, Helen Ericson,
Mildred Saffell, Kammie Hung, Georgie Feasel, Lola Meyer, Leona Rhoades,
Irene Goodrich, Joyce Auderheide, the sisters Livia and Lena Moses, Ruby
Hinson, Dorothy Milliner, Mary Conroy of Canada and others.
Several of the above listed authors are now deceased.
As an example of the fruition of
a unique concept – the publication of an early magazine solely devoted
to quilts, Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine is a valuable reference
source. Pat Almy Randolph’s
citations in Index to Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine provide researchers
with access to a significant amount of quilt history information included
in the magazine’s issues from 1969 to 1975.
Nimble
Needle Treasures Magazine, Sapulpa, Ok (1969-1975)
Cuesta Benberry
St. Louis, MO
There are no printed copies of Nimble Needle Treasures Magazines available as they have been out of print for a number of years.
However, you may now order the CD, which contains complete copies of all 24 issues of Nimble Needle Treasures Magazine for . An Interactive Index is included on the CD with the magazines at no extra cost.
