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Jackie Reis Quilt Enters Texas Tech Museum Collection
By Marian Ann J. Montgomery, Ph.D.
Curator, Clothing and Textiles, Museum of Texas Tech University
Jackie Reis was a quilter of the quilt revival who taught many West Texas and New Mexico women to quilt and also loved quilt history. After her death in May 2017, the children of Jackie Reis donated her Balls and Bows quilt to the Clothing and Textiles Collection at the Museum of Texas Tech University. This quilt was made using her first Accu-Pattern quilt block set.
Although basically self taught, Jackie attended workshops with Catherine Anthony, Libby Lehman, Helen Squire, Bernice Enyeart, Jean Ray Laury and others. Her enthusiasm and interest paralleled the quilting resurgence of the seventies. While trying to make up a quilt from a book she discovered that the patterns were not accurate so she decided she needed to do her own drafting.
Balls and Bows quilt by Jackie Reis
Jackie Reis had an innate ability with geometry. Working with her husband, who was a mechanical engineer and taught her how to draft patterns on the computer, Jackie created the Accu-Pattern company out of her Lubbock home. Today’s quilters may have these patterns in their stash. Ten different pattern sets were produced. Along with the quilt the children also donated a complete run of the patterns and surviving business files.
Jackie was gracious in giving quilt related materials during her life to the Museum. Her most significant donation was the Sunburst Quilt created by Sally Beaird Lewellin circa 1885 in Brown County [in west central Texas], which she purchased from the family.
If this quilt looks familiar it is because another made by Sally Beaird Lewellin is on the cover of the book, LoneStars, A Legacy of Texas Quilts, 1836-1936, the quilt documentation conducted by Karoline Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes. A paper on this pattern was given at the fall 2017 American Quilt Study Group Seminar that documented the unusual pattern to the Georgia/Tennessee border where Sally was raised. Jackie’s donation remains the only one of Sally Beaird Lewellin’s quilts to be in a public museum available for all to study and see.
As evidenced by her pattern company, Jackie enjoyed creating block patterns. Her children recall that after seeing the Texas shaped sidewalk-paving bricks outside a quilt shop in Lewisville, TX she went home and worked for 10 hours until she successfully drafted Texas Tessellations so it could be pieced without using inset pieces. Below is a tote bag she made from this pattern, which she used while teaching quilting.
Texas Tessellations pattern drafted by Jackie Reis
made into a tote bag by her circa 2000
Mrs. Reis was also an avid student of quilt history and attended inductions at the Quilters Hall of Fame in Marion, Indiana where she met several of the Honorees. The Flower Basket Petit quilt made by Grace Snyder based on a china pattern enchanted her. Jackie made a quilt top that is a small size version of the Grace’s quilt and donated it along with pieces of the china on which it was based. The family also donated books from her quilt history research collection to the Clothing and Textiles Research Library of the Museum.
To have a quilt made by the founder of a Texas quilt pattern company from patterns she drafted and sold is a wonderful addition to the Museum’s Collection. Choosing which of her many quilts with which to honor Jackie’s memory at the museum was surely a challenge for her children.
Listen to a Quilt Alliance S.O.S. (https://quiltalliance.org/?s=dickson) with Sarah Abright Dickson from the International Quilt Festival where she mentions her first quilt class with teacher, Jackie Reis (at 3:50 min.), and the impact that class had on her quilting.
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