More On Quilts

My favorite part of the show last weekend were the antique quilts. The oldest one dated back to around 1900; most were from the 1920s-early 1970s and were made by women from this area. Many were made from dresses, pajamas, and other clothing items worn by the quilter and her family, while some from the Depression Era were made from feedsacks.

I did not know much about the history of quilting so I looked it up on the Internet. According to an article on wikipedia.com, quilting has been around since Ancient Egypt and possibly even before. Variations of quilting were very popular in the Middle Ages, especially in the upper class.

In America, quilting did not become widely popular until the advent of the sewing machine in the 1850s. Prior to that, quilting was mostly done by wealthy women with leisure time.
The reason the sewing machine made quilting more popular with middle-class women of the 1800s is not because the sewing machine made quilting easier, but because it made it easier for women to make clothes for their families, giving them more time for activities like quilting.

Although quilts in the 1800s were servicable and used to keep warm on cold winter nights, quilting became a creative and social outlet for women that continues to this day.

Quilts also played a major role in the movement to free slaves in America. Abolitionists made quilts and sold them at fairs and such to raise money for the movement to end slavery. Anti-slavery poems and sayings often were appliqued or written onto the quilts.
There also are stories that quilts made in the log cabin pattern were hung on the clothes line outside “safe” houses, letting runaway slaves know it was safe to stop there on their escape route to the North, and that some quilts were made into map patterns of stops along the Underground Railroad. According to the Wikipedia article, though, there is no evidence to support this.

But I like to think it’s true!

I try to go to quilt exhibits whenever I can. One that especially stands out in my memory was at Brooks Art Museum in Memphis in the early 90s. It was an African-American quilt exhibit and it was fabulous! Their quilts don’t just follow patterns, they tell stories of women’s lives. I went with my friend, Cindy. The security guard told us as we were leaving that of all the women who had visited the exhibit, he had never seen anyone study the quilts as much as we did…we were there for hours!