Antique

In the fall of 2017, a dozen women in New York's Catskill Mountains came together for a craft project. Many of them were New York City transplants, and most were either retired or semi-retired; they needed something to occupy their minds and hands during the long, snowy Catskills winter.

What they found was old neckties, hundreds of them, which they cut into small hexagons to make a quilt — of sorts. The group, which dubbed itself the Catskilled Crafters, pieced the hexagons into a giant 10-foot-long tie called Big Daddy, and dozens of foot-wide hexagonal cloth "vignettes." Local sculptor and performance artist Wendy Brackman became a mentor to the group. She named their project The Ties That Bind — and all of it is now on display in the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Crafter Gail Freund lost her father a year and a half before the project began, and used his silk tie and a tie that belonged to one of his best friends as part of the work. A former magazine and newspaper illustrator who also spent years designing costume jewelry, Freund says "it was really comforting to do a lot of sewing and handle their stuff. It was very meditative."




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