Quilting
Quiltmaker Lora King's Hands,
Meadows of Dan Baptist Church Quilting Group,
September 14, 1978
Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996
African-American folk artist Harriet Powers, now nationally recognized for her quilts, was born in rural Georgia on October 29, 1837. Using traditional appliqué technique, Powers recorded local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events on her quilts. Considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting, Powers's work is on display at the Smithsonian Institution and is featured in the online exhibition Seven Southern Quilters.
In 1938, one hundred years after Powers's birth, Mayme Reese shared her own memories of quilting in turn-of-the-century South Carolina with a Federal Writers' Project interviewer. Just as the beauty of Powers's work transcended race and class, Reese's recollections suggest fine quilting was a skill Southern women of all classes appreciated. Reese remembered:
Sometimes rich white women would hear that such and such a person had won the prize for pretty quilts, they'd come and ask that person to make them a quilt…Sometimes they'd make it and sometimes they wouldn't…If they did make it, they'd get around five dollars…Sometimes they'd furnish the scraps and sometimes they wouldn't. Most of the time, though, they'd buy pieces of goods and give it to the person who was making the quilt to cut up.
"Mrs. Mayme Reese," New York City, September 21, 1938.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
![Interior of Elling O[h]nstad Sod House](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/images/1029sod.gif)
Interior of Elling O[h]nstad Sod House,
Fairdale, North Dakota,
June 24, 1923.
The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920
Harmony in the Home,
Fairdale, North Dakota,
circa 1890.
The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920
Although prized for their beauty, quilts were necessities of life for pioneer families. Quilts not only adorned beds, but also served as makeshift doors, windows, and cloaks. Patching quilts to keep large pioneer families warm was one of many housewifely duties. Writing about newly wed Anne Janette Kellogg, Gerald Carson characterized the lot of the early Michigan wife:
Thus began another woman's life in pioneer Michigan—the hanging of the almanac from the clock shelf, the childbearing, the round of baking, sewing, washing, canning, threading dried apples on strings, the interminable making of carpet rags; quilts and comforters; filling bed ticks with oat straw; of ironing, patching and mending.
Gerald Carson, Cornflake Crusade, pages 85-86.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest, ca. 1820-1910
Sewing a Quilt,
Jennie Pettway and another girl with the quilter Jorena Pettway, Gees Bend, Alabama,
Arthur Rothstein, photographer,
April 1937.
Making a Quilt from Surplus Commodity Cotton,
Greensboro, Greene County, Georgia,
Jack Delano, photographer,
October 1941.
Grandmother from Oklahoma with Grandson, Working on Quilt,
Kern County, California,
Dorothea Lange, photographer,
February 1936.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1938-1944.
During the Depression, the handcrafting of quilts from scraps and surplus materials helped rural Southerners survive hard times. Photographers of the Farm Security Administration documented quilting activities in small towns throughout the United States. These photographs also reveal the social and intergenerational nature of the pastime.
Sharing the work of quilting with friends and neighbors lightened the burden and created an occasion for fun and conversation. New Englander Ella Bartlett recalled the quilting bees of her youth for an WPA interviewer in 1938:
We would think we'd got everybody quilted up, when some mornin' there'd be a knock at the front door and some boy or girl would be there to say that 'Ma sent her compliments' and would I come to her quiltin' bee, and then we'd know another of the girls had got engaged.
"Ella Bartlett," Brookfield, Massachusetts, December 19, 1938
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
Contemporary quilters continue to carry on this American craft tradition, creating quilts in the classic patterns and developing innovations as well. The online collection Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996 contains materials from American Folklife Center field projects documenting quiltmaking as it is practiced in the United States today. The collection includes 181 sound recordings of quilters talking about their work and their quilting methods.
Portrait of Mamie and Leonard Bryan on Porch in Front of Quilt,
Lyntha Scott Eiler, photographer,
September 10, 1978.
Listen to Mamie Bryan.
Bertha Marion at Quilt Frame,
Terry Eiler, photographer,
August 1978.
Sabe and Donna Choate Standing in Front of Quilt Draped on Fence,
Geraldine N. Johnson, photographer,
September 25 or 26, 1978.
Listen to Donna Choate.
Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996
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