Negotiating Time and Space for Serious Leisure: Quilting in the Modern U.S. Home

Abstract

Drawing on unstructured interviews with 70 American women quilters, I examine both the leisure constraints they experience and the acts of resistance they engage in while practicing serious leisure quilting. Even though quilting is a feminized and gendered activity, there are still time and space constraints in the traditional heterosexual family which impact quilting. Women resist such constraints and stereotypical notions of gender relations as they pursue serious leisure quilting. They quilt first for themselves, and second to administer to family and kin needs in gendered ways (e.g., gifts that cement emotional ties to family and friends). As a serious leisure activity, quilting highlights how women accept, reproduce, and negotiate traditional notions of gender in families. Copyright 2006 National Recreation and Park Association.