The New York Times reported the death of Ruth Benerito yesterday.
Ruth certainly changed all quilters' lives.
When I was little, I remember cotton was, well, fairly creepy. Wrinkly, wierd. I'm talking about cotton clothes, but we all know that cotton from, ahem, 50 years ago can be pretty rugged to work with. It needs a good deal of pressing and is often a bit brittle feeling.
Ruth changed all that. As a USDA chemist, she helped perfect modern wrinkle-free cotton in the late 1950s which became available to all in the mid-1960s. Reading how takes me back to the college textiles lab (cellulose, polymers, glucose molecules, hydrogen bonds).
She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008. She was 97 when she died.
You can read the Times article by Margalit Fox here. I love the head - (Ruth) Made Cotton Cloth Behave! Be sure to google her name too - you can learn a lot.
I remember when permanent press changed lives. But I had no clue on what it was. Thanks!
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