BROKEN STARS & SILK DREAMS
We have had deep snow. No teams passed for over three weeks, but as soon as the drifts could be broken through Mary Scott sent her boy Frank around to say she was going to have a quilting. Everybody turned out.
Letter dated February 7, 1841, Ohio1
Quilting and quilts have had a powerful hold on the hearts and imaginations of Americans for more than two centuries. Since the late eighteenth century, quilting has represented a form of community for American women, a way to bring them together when they spent much of their time isolated in their homes, especially as families moved farther west. Later, quilts came to symbolize a romanticized version of that past, one that glorified a hardy, self-sufficient, frugal, and resourceful lifestyle. As a result, quilts are closely tied to the nation’s identity; though they originated in the British Isles, today they are a distinctly American phenomenon.
Before the first colonists arrived on the shores of North America, quilting had primarily been a profession regulated by guilds, especially in England. Their products, originally clothing meant to be worn under armor, began to include bed coverings in the 1600s. Considered luxury items at the time (the fabric for such a covering often cost more than the bed it was placed on), these early quilts consisted of a top made with two lengths of cloth seamed together, backed with a plainer cloth, and layered with wool batting. Quilters sewed the layers together with stitches laid out in decorative patterns. British colonists brought this form of whole cloth quilting to the New World, but only women with the money to purchase the fabric and the time to produce them could make these fancy and expensive textiles. That changed in the nineteenth century.
As professional quilting in Britain died out in the early nineteenth century, the pastime of quilting became popular in the United States. This happened partly because quilting parties, later called quilting bees, brought was declaring that patchwork quilts could be found in “the house of the rich mother” as well as “the poor hovel.” In 1877, the noted that patchwork was the first needlework taught to schoolgirls and the last practiced by old women, who could “no longer conquer the intricacies of fine work, [but] will still make patchwork quilts for the coming generation.” By the mid-nineteenth century, quilts had become ubiquitous in American life. Today, quilts remain an American icon, but instead of being made by the rich, poor, young, and old, they are made by hobbyists who have clubs, classes, and stores to help them design and sew unique and, frequently, artistic creations. Occasionally, novices will consider making a quilt to acknowledge a milestone, such as a wedding, birth, or community celebration. Either way, Americans are likely to continue to embrace and reinvent this American tradition for many years to come.
