Faculty Publications

Serious Leisure In The Home: Professional Quilters Negotiate Family Space

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Quilting, Serious leisure, Work and family balance

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Gender, Work and Organization

Volume

18

Issue

4

First Page

399

Last Page

414

Abstract

Although quilting has become more popular in the USA since its re-emergence in 1976, with 15 per cent of households participating at the time of writing, quilting is still thought by many to be a frivolous, quaint or silly feminized activity. Those who quilt professionally, or for profit have difficulty legitimating their efforts as 'real work'. Our focus is on one aspect of the quilting industry - professional quilters - and their negotiation of legitimacy for quilting work that is done in the home. We conduct secondary qualitative data analysis of 147 interviews of mostly women professional quilters from the Quilters' Save Our Stories Oral History Project. Professional quilters have more legitimacy and more claim to home-based resources such as time and space than do amateur quilters but their work is still devalued as a gendered activity in the home. Despite achieving objective indicators of professional success (e.g., money, prizes and international recognition), professional quilters still have difficulty defending their home-based employment activities and acquiring resources to carry it out. © 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Department

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology

Original Publication Date

7-1-2011

DOI of published version

10.1111/j.1468-0432.2009.00444.x

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