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Poster for How to Make an American Quilt
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Released
1995 · FILM

How to Make an American Quilt

A young woman on the brink of marriage journeys to her grandmother's California home, where stories stitched into an American quilt reveal the wisdom of generations and challenge her choices.

There's beauty in the patterns of life.

Runtime
116 min
ComedyDramaRomance

Synopsis

Finn Dodd, a graduate student about to be married, begins to experience doubts when she suspects her fiancé of infidelity. To help clear her mind, she travels to Grasse, Calif., to visit her grandmother, Hy, and great aunt, Glady Joe Cleary. During her stay, Finn discovers that Hy and Glady Joe are part of a dedicated group of quilters. Through her time with them, she hears numerous stories about love and life from women who have lived full lives and accumulated considerable wisdom.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 22

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Jill BilcockShot by Janusz KaminskiScored by Thomas NewmanDesigned by Leslie Dilley

Box Office

1995 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 4.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$41.2M

Budget$10.0M
Worldwide gross$41.2M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $23.6M 57% of worldwide · International: $17.6M (43%)

Also known as

  • Ein amerikanischer Quiltde
  • Le Patchwork de la viefr
  • Gli anni dei ricordiit

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