Processes and customs involved in the construction of threelayered textile bedcoverings.
Quilts typically consist of a decorated top, a soft filler, and a plain lining. Quilts may
include a number of different practical or decorative needlework processes, among the
most common of which are piecework, in which cloth pieces are seamed together;
appliqué, in which cloth pieces are sewn directly to a background fabric; embroidery, in
which the surface is decorated with plain or colored yarns, and the actual quilting stitches
that fasten the layers together.
Quilt making is a domestic activity traditionally performed by women, either singly or
in groups. While ostensibly seen as practical bedcovers, quilts function in a variety of
symbolic roles within families or communities. The complexity of quilt making within
American society means that not only folklorists, but also scholars in many other fields
study aspects of the subject, including scholars in textile, social, and art history; women’s
studies; communications; American studies; and popular culture.
In various American communities, particularly during the 19th century, the making of
quilts was often associated with marriage and preparation for setting up a household. The
number and quality of the quilts prepared by a young woman might have served as an
indication of her suitability for marriage. Special quilts were typically the property of
women and were often given or bequeathed to female relatives or friends.
One of the primary functions of quilts has always been to demonstrate the creativity,
artistry, originality, or technical expertise of their makers. Other forms of needlework,
such as samplers, also served this function, although, while samplers were displayed
within the family home, the display function of quilts operated within die larger
community. Quilt competitions in local fairs served as arenas in which women vied for
public acclaim for their accomplishments in womanly spheres, and quilts were the most
significant of the items entered. At times when women’s opportunities for public
recognition were limited, excellence in quilt making provided such recognition.
Beginning during the Civil War era, women’s groups have used quilts to raise funds
for churches, community groups, and other causes. During the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, these fund-raiser quilts typically included embroidered names of persons or
businesses who paid a few cents to have them included. The finished quilt was usually
auctioned or raffled, depending upon the group’s attitudes toward gambling. Church
groups often used the money for mission work or to provide furnishings for their church
building. The sharing of quilt patterns and techniques has served as a basis for communication
and interaction among women, not only in the 19th century when such exchanges were
face to face, but later through quilt-pattern columns regularly printed by local, regional,
and national periodicals.
Historic evidence suggests that while both quilting and patchwork (a term that often
includes both piecework and appliqué) are ancient techniques, they were not combined in
the making of bedcovers until, perhaps, the 17th or 18th century in Europe. A major
influence for quilt making in Europe was the influx of Asian goods resulting from the
Crusades and, later, sea trade with India: Among the goods brought from India to Europe
were block-printed and dyed cotton fabrics, a novelty to Europeans limited largely to
wool and linen textiles. Imported cottons were popular for clothing, bedcoverings, and
bed curtains. An 18th-century English ban on the importation and use of imported
cottons, intended to aid the domestic wool industry, was largely ineffective, although
resulting shortages may have contributed to the practice of cutting out and appliquéing
individual printed motifs on bedcovers and bed hangings. These appliquéd bedding
textiles replaced an earlier and more time-consuming English tradition of embroidered
textiles. Appliquéd, embroidered, and whole-cloth quilts (those without patchwork)
represented the valued possessions of well-to-do families.
European settlers in the American colonies brought with them a variety of bedding
textiles, including quilts and woven bed “ruggs” (sometimes spelled “rugs,” this coarse,
shagged textile is not to be confused with floor carpets), coverlets, and blankets. In colonial household inventories, quilts were always less numerous and more
highly valued than other bedding. The popularity of quilts expanded in the late 18th
century, aided by improvements in textile and printing technologies.
The earliest American quilts resemble dieir counterpartsin Europe: They tended to be
large (often more than 100 inches per side), square, and the designs generally included a
central motif surrounded by one or more concentric borders. In the Northern colonies,
households made glazed, solid-colored, whole-cloth, or simply pieced wool quilts, called
“calimancoes” (sometimes inaccurately called linsey-woolseys). In the Southern colonies,
quilt makers favored lightweight, white wholecloth quilts, which were sometimes
decorated with embroidery or stuffed work (small bits of filling inserted into the quilted
design to add dimension). Because they served a decorative, not a utilitarian, fiinction,
early quilts generally have little or no filler and are typically highly embellished with
quilting designs.
During the first half of the 19th century, block-style quilts gradually supplanted the
European framed-center style in America. Recent evidence suggests that the development
of early block patterns may have originated in the major folkcultural area of southeastern
Pennsylvania. As German immigrants had no tradition of patchwork bedcovers, the new
American designs appear to be a result of a combination of English traditions of making
patchwork quilts and German design elements and color choices.
The 1840s mark the beginning of an era of development and expansion in American
quilt making. New developments in domestic textile technology provided quilt makers
with more fabric options at less cost, and, at the same time, westward migration
contributed to the dissemination of patterns and styles.
A number of quilt styles went in and out of fashion during the 19th century. A method
of piecing fabric over small paper templates developed in Great Britain and became
popular in mid-century in American cities that traded with Britain, such as Charleston,
South Carolina.
In the Mid-Atlantic cultural area adjoining the Chesapeake Bay, a local tradition
developed of making sampler album appliqué quilts (in which each block represents a
different pattern). The style, which has become known as the Baltimore Album quilt, is
characterized by highly elaborate appliqué motifs, typically floral but sometimes
depicting other designs such as birds, buildings, or “cut-paper” abstractions. Typically,
each block is signed or inscribed by the maker, donor, or other designee. The album style
spread throughout settled areas of the United States between 1840 and 1860.
The late 19th century represents the era of most widespread involvement in American
quilt making. A large number of pieced and appliquéd patterns developed and were
disseminated during this period. Domestic fabrics were inexpensive and plentiful so that,
for the first time, quilts were made by all social classes, for utilitarian as well as
decorative uses. Perhaps the first nationwide quilt fad occurred between 1880 and 1900, as quilt makers
everywhere made crazy quilts. While the impetus for this movement is unclear, possible
contributing factors include Japanese decorative arts and English needlework, both of
which were introduced to American audiences at the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia in 1876. Crazy quilts are typically formed of irregular pieces of cloth
attached to a cloth foundation and embellished with decorative embroidery. Late-19thcentury crazy quilts generally included a large variety of silk remnants, which were
available by mail order. Crazy quilts originated, not from economy or need, but from the
late Victorian love of embellishment and excess.
After 1900, crazy quilts were no longer popular among urban quilt makers, but rural
women made them from recycled wool and cotton clothing. Even the 20th-century folk
versions of crazy quilts, however, usually include some embroidery. The production of
utilitarian crazy quilts in the early 20th century led some writers of the period to
conclude, incorrectly, that crazy quilts were the original, utilitarian form from which
other quilts had developed.
The subject of quilts made by Afirican American women is a controversial one.
Surviving African American quilts from the 19th century are rare and are usually
indistinguishable from those made by non-Black quilt makers. Art historians have
pointed out compelling visual similarities between both historic and contemporary
African textiles and late-20th-century African American quilts, but the absence of
intervening evidence prevents the establishment of more definitive links.
The most famous African American quilter of the 19th century was Harriet Powers,
whose two known extant quilts represent scenes of biblical and local history. These
pictorial quilts, evidence of significant individual artistry, may also represent a larger
African American tradition, of which little other documentation survives.
Generally, African American quilt makers who have lived in proximity to White quilt
makers have produced similar quilts, while Black quilt makers who worked in
comparative isolation from outside influences, including publications, developed their
own intuitive, eclectic styles, techniques, and design traditions.
Many Native American groups adopted quilt making as contact with White settlers
gave them access to woven cloth. Plains tribes in particular found that quilts substituted
easily for decorated buffalo robes, and that certain patterns, especially the Rising Sun
(later called Lone Star), were similar to traditional Native American designs.
Contemporary Native American powwows include quilts as important elements in their
gift-giving rituals.
American quilt making during the 20th century was influenced by two major factors.
First, the Colonial Revival movement in the decorative arts encouraged women to make
quilts like those of their ancestors. With the availability of inexpensive blankets, only the
very poor had continued to make utilitarian quilts, so women’s magazines suggested quilt
making as a new hobby for middle-class women.
The second factor was the dissemination of quilt patterns through popular magazines
and “story papers,” inexpensive or free publications that induded advertising, articles, and
needlework columns, including syndicated quilt patterns. These two factors created a climate for a renewed interest in quilt making during the period 1925–
1940.
Quilts made during this period typically feature pastel colors, in both solids and smallfigured prints. While occasional quilt makers employed favorite patterns from the 19th
century, such as the Log Cabin and the Rising Sun, they more often used some of the new
patterns shown in periodicals. The most popular patterns of the early 20th century include
Double Wedding Ring, Little Dutch Girl (also called Sunbonnet Sue), Dresden Plate, and
Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
This period is also characterized by the development of a class of professional
designers, collectors, and quilt entrepreneurs. Marie Webster designed quilts for Ladies’
Home Journal beginning in 1911, and her book Quilts: Their Story and How to Make
Them appeared in 1915, the first monograph on the subject of quilts. Anne Orr authored a
regular needlework column in Good Housekeeping magazine in the 1920s that launched a
design and mail-order pattern business.
During the 1940s and 1950s, interest in quilt making declined generally, although
patterns and kits were still available. In addition to quilt makers, there were other
individuals who began to collect patterns and quilt-related ephemera. Beginning in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, a renewed interest in quilts and quilt making emerged. By the
1980s, hundreds of thousands of quilt makers had formed guilds throughout the United
States, in order to share their interests, provide mutual support, sponsor competitions, and
raise money for charitable causes. A second generation of “quilt professionals,” including
authors, designers, and teachers, developed to serve the needs of these groups.
An interest in American-style quilt making spread internationally during the 1980s,
particularly in Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, where American techniques
have been adapted and merged with local needlework and design traditions by
contemporary quilt makers.
Another important movement in the late 20th century has been the development of
state and regional quilt projects. These projects originated in response to the desire to
better understand quilt making traditions, both local and national. In the knowledge that
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of quilts exist but are generally not available to
public view, quilt makers and interested others designed public “quilt days,” during
which the quilts in a local area could be brought out to be examined and photographed.
As of 1993, each of the United States had begun at least one such project. Typically, the
projects result in an archive of photographic and written documents, one or more
exhibitions, and a book. The accumulated data from the projects are beginning to reveal
important regional and local traditions within American quilt making.
In addition to a new generation of quilt makers who make quilts as art, to hang on
walls, there remains a large number of traditional quilt makers, who, while not making
quilts from necessity, make them for use, or potential use, on beds. Traditional quilt
makers typically have grown up with a knowledge of quilts, prefer using familiar
patterns, and make quilts as gifts for family and friends.
In the late 20th century, national groups have used quilts collectively to make political
statements, including the Peace Ribbon, the combined quilt panels of thousands of
contributors that was wrapped around the Pentagon; and the NAMES Project, which
collects and displays quilt panels commemorating persons who have died from AIDS
(acquired immune deficiency syndrome).
Laurel Horton
References
American Quilt Study Group. 1980–. Uncoverings. Vols. 1–. San Francisco: American Quilt Study
Group.
Benberry, Cuesta. 1992. Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts.
Louisville: Kentucky Quilt Project.
Brackman, Barbara, et al. 1993. Kansas Quilts and Quilters. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Clark, Ricky, et al. 1991. Quilts in Community: Ohio’s Traditions. Nashville: Rutledge Hill.
Ferrero, Pat, et al. 1987. Hearts and Hands: The Influence of Women and Quilts on American
Society. San Francisco: Quilt Digest.
Heritage Quilt Project of New Jersey. 1992. New jersey Quilts, 1777 to 1950: Contributions to an
American Tradition. Paducah, KY: American Quilter’s Society.
Horton, Laurel, ed. 1994. Quilt Making in America: Beyond Mythology. Nashville: Rutledge Hill.
Ice, Joyce. 1989. Splendid Companionship and Practical Assistance. In Quilted Together: Women,
Quilts, and Communities. Delhi, NY: Delaware County Historical Association, pp. 6–32.
Lasansky, Jeannette. 1991. Bits and Pieces: Textile Traditions. Lewisburg, PA: Oral Traditions
Project.
Williams, Clover. 1992. Tradition and Art: Two Layers of Meaning in the Bloomington Quilt
Guild. In Uncoverings 1991. Vol. 12 of the Research Papers of the American Quilt Study
Group. San Francisco: American Quilt Study Group, pp 118–141.