By: Tandy Hersh

My purpose in this paper is to present a “micro” analysis of this quilt. Sally Garoutte’s paper “Early Colonial Quilts in a Bedding Context” in UNCOVERINGS 1980 was a “macro” analysis in comparison, the study of a large number of quilts mentioned in wills and inventories in given areas and times. I will describe and analyze one glazed wool quilt with the date September 13, 1809, and initials MRMc quilted along one edge,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Some Aspects of an 1809 Quilt  »

By: Sally Garoutte

The French Input to early American quilts has been surprisingly ignored. The relations between France and England’s American colonies were very close in the late-colonial period, and one would expect to find some influences. The influences, however, came through England and their origins have generally been lost.

Textile production in those times in Europe was the most extensive kind of manufacture. Among things made to sell in the 17th century in the area of southern France known as Provence were quilts.

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Marseilles Quilts and Their Woven Offspring  »

By: Pat L. Nickols

String quilts are constructed from a large number of scraps using the pressed-work technique. They were made as utility quilts, because this technique is fast, simple and practical. One wonders if another name for this technique could be the “the unworthy quilt” as we find many single blocks, unfinished tops and only a few string quilts. These quilts were utility bed covers, “using quilts,” and were indeed used up.

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
String Quilts  »

By: Nancy J. Rowley

Motivated by a sense of patriotism and invited by the media to participate in an event known as the Great War, women were inspired to join and raise money for the American Red Cross in the years between 1916 and 1920.

MODERN PRISCILLA, LADIES HOME JOURNAL, WOMEN’S HOME COMPANION and HARPERS BAZAAR are said to have ultimately started the twentieth century’s first quilt revival by urging women to “Make Quilts – save blankets for our boys over there.” However,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Red Cross Quilts for the Great War  »

By: Mary Bywater Cross

In the summer of 1981 while visiting family in Iowa City, Iowa, I received an invitation to study the quilts of Grant Wood’s family. The two quilts in Iowa City were made by Lydia Wood, Grant Wood’s maiden great aunt.

Although he may not have know the Wood family quilts existed and thus did not use them in his paintings, I conclude that Wood was probably attracted to the subject of his first painting,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
The Quilts of Grant Wood’s Family and Paintings  »

By: Mary Antoine de Julio

A grouping of approximately 170 pieces, the Betsey Reynolds Voorhees Collection contains artwork, needlework, letterbooks, and notebooks made by Betsey between 1800 and 1855. A woman of character and determination, she began work while in school and continued sewing and drawing through her married life, while raising four sons and involving herself in social issues of the time. Highly revered by her family, much of Betsey’s art and needlework was saved from sale and oblivion by her youngest son and,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
A Record of a Woman’s Work: The Betsey Reynolds Voorhees Collection  »

By: Margaret Malanyn

The Dearborn, Michigan Historical Museum was established from two surviving buildings that were once part of a federal arsenal built in the 1830s. The Museum has acquired 120 quilts since the early 1950s, donated mainly by local citizens. Through a 1979-80 research grant from the American Association of University Women, the collection was recently studied, photographed and appraised.

The quilt collection covers a time span ranging from the early 1800s through the Bicentennial and shows the great variety of work that quiltmakers did as the nation grew.

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Fifteen Dearborn Quilts  »

By: Ellen F. Eanes

These nine quilts from Meckenburg County, if not kin, are definitely connected. They were made within a period of forty years at the very most, by women who knew each other well. I became involved in this history because in January 1981, five Broderie Perse quilts owned by the Mint Museum of History in Charlotte were shown to me by the assistant curator, Barbara Taylor. A few weeks later,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Nine Related Quilts of Mecklenburg County, (North Carolina) 1800-1840  »

By: Bertha B. Brown

The dress of Cuna women is exceedingly colorful and the pride of Cuna culture. A hand-sewn, short-sleeved blouse which the Cuna call mola, decorated with complicated designs, along with sarong-like skirt and a yellow and red bandana covering their short-cropped hair, completes their everyday wearing apparel. It is the blouse, however, for which the Cuna are best know, an item which may take Cuna women six to eight weeks of leisure time to complete,

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
Cuna Molas: The Geometry of Background Fill  »

By: Barbara Brackman

The Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas has an impressive collection of over 200 quilts, and an equally impressive collection of quilt research materials. The quilts are there primarily due to the collecting of Sallie Casey Thayer; the other quilt-related materials are due to the collecting of two women – Carrie Hall and Elizabeth Szabronski.

 » Read more about: Uncoverings 1982
The Hall/Szabronski Collection at the University of Kansas  »