When not farming and raising his five children, this Nebraska engineer designed and fabricated more than 400 stunning quilts, a number of which are shown for the first time in this piece, introduced by Jonathan Gregory, Curator of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Ernest B. Haight: Sewing and Reaping
Introduction by Jonathan Gregory
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“Ernest B. Haight made his first quilt in 1934 after having criticized the imprecise construction of one crafted by his wife’s grandmother. ‘In many of the blocks, the corners of the pieces didn’t fit too well,’ he recalled later. ‘I had to mention it, and my wife, Isabelle, came right back with, “Well, if you can do better, prove it!! If not, keep still.” So...what else could I do?’”—from Jonathan Gregory’s introduction
Ernest B. Haight (1899–1992) was born and raised in rural Butler County, NE. Educated at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an agricultural engineer, Haight returned in 1924 to farm his parents’ land for the rest of his working life. Together with his wife, Isabelle, he raised two daughters and three sons. Starting in the mid-1930s, Haight began quilt-making in his spare time. Over the course of his life, he crafted more than 400 quilts. Haight developed several time-saving innovations outlined in Practical Machine Quilting for the Homemaker, a booklet he self-published in 1974. He was inducted into the Nebraska Quilters Hall of Fame in 1986.
Jonathan Gregory earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Textiles from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He led the development and production of exhibitions at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, for 16 years until his retirement in 2021. He curated the shows Covering the War: American Quilts in Times of Conflict, The Engineer Who Could: Ernest Haight’s Half Century of Quiltmaking, and Abstract Design in American Quilts at 50: Raising the Profile. He contributes to various IQSCM publications, including American Quilts in the Industrial Age, 1790–1870, and American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870–1940. Gregory is the coeditor of the IQSCM’s educational website, World Quilts.