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82-year-old Ruby Leith Minkel and her daughter Carrie Minkel-Johnson live in the Lower Sioux Indian Community in southwest Minnesota. Together, they make star quilts as gifts for people both within and outside of the community.
“I love making the quilts, and it's just something that I appreciate,” Leith Minkel said.
When they are not at home in their personal sewing rooms, the two utilize the Lower Sioux Cultural Incubator, a community center that provides a variety of cultural classes, activities and space to use.
The quilting studio is lined with several sewing machines. Thread, scissors and other supplies can be found in small plastic bins. The space has two large tables for laying fabrics across, rather than on the floor.
‘At least I got her with me’
Leith Minkel first learned to sew in high school, but she didn’t start making star quilts until the mid-1990s. She says she only needed to be shown twice before she started working independently.
“I started teaching it. I taught a few women around here that are still doing it, and I'm glad they are, because I don't want that lost. I want to keep that going,” she said. “That's why I got her [Minkel-Johnson] going.”
For Minkel-Johnson, a seamstress in her 60’s, she says she never imagined herself making quilts. She finally said ‘yes’ five years ago after many years of her mother asking to teach her.
“I never wanted her to teach me how, because I thought, if she teaches me that, what else can she teach me? You know, that was the last thing that I could think of that I wanted to learn from my mother,” she said. “[I] didn't realize it was going to bring us closer together and to spend more time together.”
Leith Minkel says it didn’t take long for her daughter to catch on to the sewing patterns, just like herself.
Minkel-Johnson says she enjoys working closely with her mother. Quilting keeps them busy and active with fulfilling order requests or traveling to various powwows together with a table and chairs in tow.
“We don't make a lot of money making these quilts. It's more [about] having your little fingerprint on something that's going to be out there,” said Minkel-Johnson, “I'm enjoying it. I love doing it with mom.”
Even though the two are neighbors, Minkel-Johnson says the quilts bring them together. Outside of their shared love for quilting, she says it’s rare that they see one another.
“We're so busy trying to get our quilts done. We'll call each other, ‘Okay, what are you doing? How far are you?’” she said.
Leith Minkel shares in those sentiments that she loves being able to share a special bond with her daughter over star quilts.
“It's nice because, at least I got her with me,” Leith Minkel said.
‘It’s an honor’
Birthdays, graduations, weddings or funerals are events in one’s life that may call for a gift of a star quilt or blanket.
“When you're making it, you're thinking of who you're making it for,” Leith Minkel said.
She recently began working on a star quilt for a baby, choosing fabric from children’s cartoons, and pink fabric for a base color. Star quilts can be created in a variety of sizes and colors, depending on the recipient’s age or interests.
However, one thing consistent within the designs of the quilts is the signature diamond-shaped star with eight points.
“The Natives, they came from the Star Nation,” Leith Minkel explains.
While holding a quilt with her mother — showcasing a star as its centerpiece with vivid colors of the medicine wheel: yellow, red, black and white — Minkel-Johnson shares what she had been taught about star quilts. She points to the Seven Fire Councils, an alliance of the varying groups of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota people. The two make their star quilts with this in mind — the points on the quilt represent each of the seven.
“And the eighth is for the person who made the star,” she said.
To both, a star quilt represents honor.
“I always feel that it's an honor to give the quilt to them, and I can just feel the honor it is for somebody that's receiving one that we made,” Minkel-Johnson said.
Recently, they made about 50 star quilts for this year’s graduates in the Lower Sioux Indian Community. They also make star quilts upon request for those outside of their community, including graduates living in the Twin Cities area.
Leith Minkel says she can make a full quilt within two days.
“It's something that I'll probably do till the day I'm gone,” Leith Minkel said.
Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
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