Teresa Barkley, CHEP ’78, made her first quilt when she was 15. Three decades and more than 100 quilts later, Barkley, now a celebrated quilter, has lost the actual count of her art, but not her love for the craft.

“I had read in history books that a girl had to make a dozen quilts before she was 16,” says Barkley, who lives in Maplewood, N.J., with her husband, Donald McLaughlin, AS ’79, their two sons, Ian and Kyle, and a cat, Katie. “I couldn’t do that many, but at least I had one.”

The denim quilt, with 396 appliques, including Army patches that Barkley’s father, Pat Barkley, gave her on condition that she would never sell the quilt, took two years to make and is her most precious piece of work. Ironically, making that first quilt, which was initially a daunting task, spurred Barkley’s interest in quilting and creating original designs. The quilt is so precious to Barkley that she has only used it on several Christmas Eves.

“I had always liked traditional quilts, but working on the ‘Denim Quilt’ made me realize how much time it would take,” Barkley says.
“I decided at that time that, if I was going to spend so much time, it might as well be my original design.”

Born in Lincoln, Neb., Barkley, the second of five children, moved with her family to Delaware when she was 4 years old. She studied textiles and clothing at UD and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City before moving to New York City in 1980 to work in the fashion district. Her parents live in Wilmington.

Barkley says she owes her love for quilting to her mother, Carla Barkley, who taught her how to sew at the age of 5 as a way to deal with boredom when Barkley’s elder sister, Patricia, started going to school. With her excellent quilting skills and a sharp eye for antiques, artifacts and unique memorabilia, Barkley gradually built up a dazzling collection of quilts based on several different themes.

Barkley’s work is included in such institutional collections as the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Nihon Vogue in Tokyo, Japan; and the University of Delaware. Her quilts have traveled to museum venues throughout the U.S. and have been featured in exhibitions in Africa, Australia, Europe and Japan. Barkley won the prestigious Quilts Japan Prize in 1997 and went on a speaking tour of Japan in 1998.

Barkley’s quilts will be on display at the Delaware History Museum in Wilmington and UD’s University Gallery in Old College in Newark beginning in September. The Delaware Historical Society exhibit, Quilt Stories by Teresa Barkley, on view from Sept. 22-Dec. 31, is a complementary exhibition to Quilt Voices, which will be at UD from Sept. 9-Dec. 9. One of Barkley’s quilts, “Midtown Direct,” which tells the story of Barkley’s commute to work on New Jersey Transit trains, will be in the Quilt Voices exhibition. The History Museum exhibition spans 30 years of Barkley’s work, featuring more than 40 of her quilts.

In preparation for the exhibition, Barkley, who works as a pattern maker for a blouse manufacturer in New York City’s fashion district, has been sorting through dozens of quilts and putting final touches on “Midtown Direct.”

“This is the primo seat,” Barkley says, pointing with her left big toe at a patch of fabric imprinted with the picture of a cozy armchair on the unfinished quilt, which is spread on her dining room floor. “The seat waits for me. To me, it’s the most delicious time of the day, when nobody is going to talk to me. I don’t have a cell phone. I can just get lost in my thoughts.”

The quilt, which includes fabric from a Pennsylvania Railroad headrest and pieces of Pullman Co. towels, cleverly blends images portraying the entrance to the train tunnel under the Hudson River that connects New Jersey and Manhattan with an image of the World Trade Center, framed by strips of fabric to represent the electrical power lines that obstructed Barkley’s view of the Twin Towers from the train. Barkley designed the quilt before 9/11, but she put the project on hold for about two years while trying to find a way to proceed in a sensitive way with the image that is likely to evoke deep emotions and sadness.

Walking barefoot around her modest, classic Colonial, two-story home on a tree-lined street, Barkley gives a brief tour of her work area: A 5-by-4-foot dining table, the floor and any available surface in the adjoining living room, whose floor is adorned with several exquisite Oriental rugs. A ceiling-high bookcase in one corner holds more than 400 quilting books.

“It’s funny to think that that’s 35 years of my life sitting right there,” Barkley says while pointing at an armoire in her living room. She opens the doors and starts pulling out the quilts, pieces of rare fabric, including souvenirs from the World’s Fairs in St. Louis in 1904, New York in 1939, Philadelphia in 1876 and Chicago in 1893. “A big part of my work is combining historic textiles and contemporary textiles in one theme, but some of the older textiles don’t hold up very well to being sewed through.”

The themes of Barkley’s quilts include the environment, wildlife conservation, historic events like the war in Iraq or social trends such as the dawn of television and clothing labels. Others portray light-hearted topics like the circus or Disneyland. Many of her quilts are inspired by souvenir fabrics and other memorabilia, of which she has dozens of boxes sorted by theme and stashed in her attic. One of her upcoming projects will feature British royalty, she says.

In addition to quilting material, Barkley owns a dazzling collection of blue and white American art pottery, European and Asian tiles, plates, teapots, bowls, a Dutch clog, dishes, sugar bowls, brush pots, cups and saucers. All are either hung on walls or neatly arranged in glass cabinets, except for Katie’s blue and white feeding bowl on the kitchen floor. “I just think it’s beautiful, a really pleasing color combination,” Barkley says of her fascination with blue and white. “Anything that you collect and put together is the same aesthetic as quilts. It’s fun to arrange.”

Barkley says she is fortunate that her family appreciates her hobby and gives her plenty of space and time—up to 16 hours on many weekends—to quilt. Quilting, she explains, helps create a balance in her life.

“People sometimes ask me why I quilt—it’s so time-consuming—but I could not not do it,” she says. “I’m compelled to do this. I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of the components. I don’t spend nearly all the time that I would like quilting, but I usually divide my time between the quilting and the family and my job. It’s very therapeutic. You can’t focus on one of these three to the exclusion of the other two. I need a balance between the three of them.

“I have always had a day job, and quilting is a complement to that. With this, I can do whatever I want to do. It’s completely up to me, and I think that is a freedom that everybody should feel in their lives. If you are lacking other means for personal expression to complement the work that you have to do for income, you are destined to be unhappy in your day job,” she says.

According to Barkley, contrary to the perception that quilting is old-fashioned, the craft is thriving. “Quilting experienced a revival with the U.S. bicentennial in 1976. People developed an interest in doing it the old-fashioned way the colonists were doing it. Over the years since then, people have become more and more interested in producing them quickly, using all the technology available today,” she says.

“People relate to textiles in ways that they don’t to other mediums. To me, the possibilities with quilting are just endless. What’s really appealing about it is that there are no rules. It’s a very individual expression.”