The cast of "The Quilters" kicks up in a joyous scene.

Recycling the odds and ends of worn or outgrown threads was expected on the 19th-century American frontier, where material goods were in short supply. What was unexpected was the cherished memories that became the fabric of the quilts, lovingly pieced together from calico, muslin and denim to form telling patchworks of family life.

"Schoolhouse" quilt block
by costume designer
Evette Tanouye.

Directed by Wendy Gray, the musical by Molly Newman and Barbara Damasheck tells the story of Sarah Macendrie Bonem and her six daughters, through childhood, marriages, births, old age and death, with accompanying feelings of love, terror, loss and joy woven into 17 segments.

The segments will be introduced with quilt blocks created by costume designer Evette Tanouye, who found the task challenging and inspiring. She spent a month researching the quilt patterns described in the play, such as "Rocky Road" and "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul."

"I really give credit to those women who made their quilts by hand, because the patience and time it took, that's real devotion," Tanouye said. "Today we have wonderful rulers and we can cut fabric with roller razors, but every fabric, when you sew it, stretches a different way and to get the seams to match ... I wonder how they did it because theirs were much better than what I could do on a machine."

One quilt pattern, "Rebel Block," continues to elude her. "It has to do with the Confederacy, with a cross made from red calico and gray calico," she said.

Luckily, Tanouye chanced upon a professional quilter who recalled seeing the pattern once and did his best to recreate it for her in a drawing.

"I just kind of made one up from that, which is kind of a shame and kind of cheating," she said. "If anyone else has seen it I'd like to know more about it."

"The Quilters" was originally developed and produced at the Denver Center Theatre Company in 1984 and was nominated for Tony Awards in 1985. Gray saw the musical performed in California and knew right away she wanted to direct it one day.

"I grew up in a small town in Kansas and I had long heard the stories of pioneer life. My family had similar stories," said the director, who attended a one-room schoolhouse and recalls feeling the adrenaline-spiked mix of excitement and fear that comes from crouching in a storm cellar when tornadoes struck.

"My husband's grandmother was a matriarch who ran the family and managed to do her own thing. When her husband died she picked up her family from Canada and moved to Kansas - one woman and four kids - to start a new life.

"It was her way of declaring independence from her family, instead of depending on them. Later she would go into the wilderness on horseback, and through her trips to the mountains she became an expert on wild flowers and wrote a book about them."

Gray's family legacy quilt, which she believes was started by her maternal great-grandmother, sits on her bed and during the years has been added to by family members to include blocks cut from dresses she wore as a child.

As for the Bonems in "The Quilters," their story takes place in the Midwest of the 1880s, a time of great upheaval for many American families. A prolonged depression had led to a drop in wages by 1839 and massive unemployment in the East and Midwest, causing newspaper publisher Horace Greeley to urge Americans to "go West" for brighter opportunities.

More than a quarter of a million people took his advice between 1840 and 1870, crossing the continent by wagon train in search of a better life. The journeys were harsh at best and at their worst, marked by starvation, illness and death. Even after remnants of families found places to settle, they still faced the difficulty of shaping new lives and communities.

"We have a national foundation of admirable, strong women," Gray said, "In those days women would have 10, 11, 12 children and they had to make everything. They didn't have the conveniences of today."

And there was loneliness to contend with. Women had an equal hand in farm and domestic chores from dawn to dusk, with little time for socializing.

"Quilting bees became great social events, as well as a way for the women to express their creativity," Gray said. "Many of them would stay up late into the night to work on their quilts. There was not a whole lot of other things they could do to express themselves.

"I think today's women reflect the same qualities, but in a different way. We have the same instincts. There is still a lot of self-sacrifice in making homes, raising children and working," Gray said. "Each generation does what it can to survive."

What: "Quilters," presented by Windward Community College Players
When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, tomorrow through Nov. 23
Where: WCC Little Theatre, 45-720 Keaahala Road
Tickets: $8 general; $6 for students and seniors
Call: 235-7446