American quilts are appreciated for their warmth and beauty but also tell important stories.
“History chronicles the large and glorious deeds of the standard bearers…and tells nothing at all of the courageous women who keep the business of the house going,” writes Lilla Day Monroe as quoted in Johanna L. Stratton’s Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier.
“Examining a quilt is like reading a historical document,” says Stacy C. Hollander, a scholar with an expertise in folk art. “The quilt tells the story of a time and the story of a life, sometimes multiple lives.”
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Quilts Started As Signs of Status
When we think of quilts, we tend to think of women making them from scraps of material to keep their families warm in drafty houses. The introduction of quilts to this country was actually quite different from this belief.
“Textiles were among the most valued family possessions until well into the nineteenth century,” says Elizabeth Warren, author of Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (Rizzoli). She notes that most of the quilts in the Folk Art Museum (New York) collection were created for and used on special occasions, or they would not have lasted. “Some of the fabrics in the quilts would have been extremely expensive and may have been purchased specifically for using in a quilt.”
The Tradition Begins
The tradition of quilt-making began in England and was brought to the colonies, primarily in the New England area.
Most American women did not have time for handiwork of this type during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Women had a full roster of household chores that included spinning and weaving fabric so they could sew clothes for their families. Cloth was expensive and hard to come by, so the fabric often could not be spared for use in decorative work such as a quilt. Later on, old clothing was sometimes cut up to use in a quilt, but when the colonies were first settled, previously worn clothing was more likely to be refashioned to be worn by another family member.
The industrial revolution brought about major changes in the work force but also changes for homemakers and how they spent their time. Now they could buy commercial fabric rather than weaving their own. (By the 1840s fabric prices came down enough to be affordable for most families.)
The availability of cloth provided women with a little more time for creative pursuits. Interest in quilt-making began to grow. Additional changes occurred in 1856 when the Singer Company started selling sewing machines on credit. With a time payment plan, more women could obtain machines. Using machines sped up regular sewing chores to free up more time.
Reading the Story
Quilts have played an important role in our country. Many have been purely functional, created for warmth, but culturally, they have expressed the lives—and often marked the celebrations—of the women who made them.
Socially, quilt-making provided an opportunity for women to gather and share family and neighborhood news while they sewed. Quilt-making also offered an important means of expression. At a time when society felt there were limits on what was appropriate for women to say or do, the fact that women could gather together to create a quilt that expressed their patriotism, their support of the temperance movement, or their religious beliefs provided an outlet that did not ruffle society.
Who Made It and When?
Museums and quilt collectors always want to know the story behind each quilt. Who made it” When was it made? Was it for a specific purpose? When Stacy Hollander was a curator at the American Folk Art Museum, she said that occasionally a quilt was donated with biographical information about its maker. However, most quilts require study to date and place where it was from.
To study a quilt for its time of origin means that experts must have familiarity with quilting trends and knowledge of fabrics and dyes. Trends varied in different parts of the country, so that information is factored in.
Quilts made in the English style sometimes provide very helpful clues. These quilts used newspaper to make templates (patterns). Sometimes, the paper remained sewn into the sections of the quilt, giving a date and a location for a quilt. However, most of the time, the curatorial staff is left to look for hints. They study everything from the fabric to the subjects depicted to ascertain a date and a geographic area.
Made for Good Causes
Women have always helped with good causes. Many quilts were made to keep people warm; others were used to raise money for a cause. In the mid-nineteenth century, women on both sides of the Civil War undertook blanket- and quilt-making. Sometimes these quilts were donated directly to soldiers; other times, they were sold at fairs to raise money for war-related needs.
This trend continues today. The best-known political quilt of all time is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, begun in San Francisco in 1987. The original intent of the quilt was to memorialize the lives of people who died of AIDS, particularly at a time when the disease was viewed with great shame. Today we know more about AIDS. There are medical “cocktails” that greatly help patients, but the quilt is still important. It now contains more than 110,000 names. The money raised by the AIDS Memorial organization sends funds to people with AIDS as well as maintaining the quilt memorial (it now is estimated to weigh more than 54 tons).
Quick Points about Quilts
- In the late 1700s and early 1800s in this country, quilts would have only been in the homes of the wealthy. Other women would have been so busy spinning thread, weaving fabric, and then sewing clothing that there would have been no time for quilt-making.
- Album quilts, where the each block is made and signed by someone different were often created on the occasion of someone moving away. The quilt was then given as a practical and loving gift. These quilts were also presented to favorite pastors or doctors as thank you gifts.
- Quilts offered women an opportunity for political expression. At a time when women did not have the right to vote, a quilt supporting a political viewpoint was as close as women would come to being able to have a political voice.
- Quilting bees were delightful social occasions for women who were generally kept quite busy taking care of the children and tending to the household responsibilities.