Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 16, Number 8, 1 August 1999 — Stitching a legacy together [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Stitching a legacy together

Several readers have inquired about Hannah Ku'umililani Cummings Baker whose photo appeared in the upper left corner of the March Ka Wai Ola cover commemorating Women's History Month. Here is the story of this master quilter.

B y Paula Durbln //II JE HAWAIIANS 1 I made a big misyy take," Hannah W W Baker used to say. » ? "We hung on to our quilt patterns and gave away our land. We should have done the opposite. If we had, quilting wouldn't be a dying art

and we'd all be going around with rent receipt books in our pocket." Although many contemporary Hawaiians might regret with Baker the loss of their lands, they see Hawaiian quilting as vibrant and alive today. When Baker died at 75 in 1981, she was unaware that a groundswell of interest was taking quilts to a new level of popularity, thanks to the Hawai-

īan cultural renaissance and her own efforts. "If anyone was the beginning. she was," said Baker's student Elizabeth Akana. "With her joy, her gift for teaching, she was able to impart her love of a tradition of expressing what is in your heart as poetry done in fabric." "Mv

mother

acquired her art when she was a young girl, working with her mother and great-grandmoth-er," said Hollis Baker, Hannah's third child, now a retired school principal. Because of her own mother's early death, Hannah, had to drop out of the Hawaiian Mission Academy to care for her five siblings. Eventually, she married Bruce Baker, had seven ehildren and made headlines when she graduated from her alma mater as her oldest daughter's classmate. Out of safetv eon-

cerns, in 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the family moved to California where the surviving Baker children still reside. But the teaching career Baker began in 1936 at the Papakōlea Community Hall continued through the early 1970s, and the loeal newspapers would always report when she was back in town to give classes. Her effectiveness in spreading her art was based as mueh on generosity as on talent and training. As developed by Hawaiians, the quilt is not an arrangement of fabric scraps but is a usually a solid floral apphque on a solid background. The starting point is the design, selected ffom among patterns

would hang the quilts to dry inside out so no one could copy them. Mom was the type of person who wanted to share," said Holhs Baker. //II annah Baker was II the lady who showed us the art I form was about I loving and sharing," explained Akana. "She had two suitcases full of patterns she carried around with her. We are not sure whieh she had collected and whieh were her own but she perpetuated them all by sharing them. Now her patterns are all over the world. She was the Johnny Appleseed of the Hawaiian quilt, and I want to be like her."

As Baker's disciple, Akana has taught on the continent and in Japan, Aotearoa, England and Scotland. In 1991 she made a 13-part series on Hawaiian quilting for it II • t • 1 * _

nawai ī ruonc Television that ran on 160 of 320 nahonal affiliates. She has also created a traveling exhibit

now at Hilo's Lyman Museum although not on display. In 1978, Bruce Baker entered his wife's favorite quilt, Pīkake and Tuberose,"

m Uooā Housekeeping s "Great Quilts of America" contest. Because of her deteriorating heahh, Hannah Baker never knew her quilt placed first among the state's entries and second nationally. The quilt is now at the Bishop Museum. "When Mom was near death," Hollis Baker recalled, "she asked my sister, 'Before I go, will you promise me that you will carry on?"' Lillian Baker Macedo agreed and now has to mrn students away from her popular classes in Hayward, Calif. Books of Baker's patterns are kept at the Wai'anae Library where Hawaiian quilters ean trace them for their personal use. ■

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Hannah Baker with her handiwork in 1967.

traditionally squirreled away and enveloped in kapu so that thev

would not be coopted. "People