By: Wilene Smith

There has been very little written about how nineteenth century quiltmakers collected, recorded, and exchanged patterns. Marie Webster, Patsy and Myron Orlofsky, Ruth McKendry, and Jeanette Lasansky have touched on the subject, while Dolores Hinson, in 1970, delved deeper, referring to collections of quilts blocks as “quilter’s catalogs”.

I have interviewed a quiltmaker, born in 1907 in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks, who learned many of her cooking and needlework skills from her grandmother (1856-1933).

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Quilt Blocks-or-Quilt Patterns  »

By: Tandy Hersh

A rarely seen technique of transforming printed fabric design arrangements into very different pieced design arrangements, by careful cutting to fit a geometric form, was used on the 1842 Primitive Hall album quilt top. Two twelve inch blocks contain an ink drawing of the house and four generations of the distinguished Pennsylvania Quaker family that built Primitive Hall in 1738. The remaining twenty-three blocks are pieced in the English method of overcasting over paper templates.

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1842 Primitive Hall Pieced Quilt Top: The Art of Transforming Printed Fabric Designs through Geometry  »

By: Susan L. Davis

The research was undertaken to study the evolution of quilts in the Appalachian Virginia county of Floyd as a means of documenting the life and culture of the county natives. Existing documents and relics were examined and methods of both qualitative and quantitative analysis were instituted. Twenty-two third generation (plus) resident quilters were interviewed orally and recorded on tape. Interview form was structured and utilized a visual instrument which was developed to substantiate subject response to interview questions.

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Quilts and Quilters of Floyd County Virginia  »

By: Nora Pickens

A survey of New Mexico quiltmakers, conducted in 1985 by the museum of International Folk Art, included only those quilters who learned the craft in childhood or youth from family or community. Women who learned in this way tend to have come of age between the two world wars; younger women seldom learned in this way. The quilts made by these women are made from scraps; in New Mexico there was not a parallel tradition of “nice” quilts.

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Scrap Quilts of New Mexico  »

By: Joe Cunningham

In a study of 160 quilts in the Mary Schafer collection, we found nineteen that were started by Elizabeth (Betty) Harriman and finished by Mary. Betty completed her first full-size quilt in 1910, and continued to make and collect quilts until her death in 1971. She and Mary corresponded actively during the 1960’s. When Betty died, Mary acquired all her unfinished work, including antique blocks and tops, patterns,

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Fourteen Quilts Begun by one Woman and Finished by Another  »

By: Jessica F. Nicoll

In a study of forty-one signature quilts made in the Delaware Valley between 1841 and 1860, twenty-one were found to have been made by Quakers. These quilts are stylistically cohesive forming a distinctive group. Eighteen of the twenty-one Quaker quilts are friendship quilts, usually worked in a restrained palette. Formally the quilts reaffirm the basic tenets of the Quaker faith: simplicity, equality, and community. Detailed genealogical and historical research revealed that the quilts’ makers shared not only religious affiliation but also social and economic circumstances.

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Signature Quilts and the Quaker Community, 1840-1860  »

By: Erma H. Kirkpatrick

Every spring for fifty-four years the small North Carolina community of Eli Whitney has held a quilting. Originally proposed as a means of bringing together parents of students who attended the Eli Whitney School, “Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party” has outlasted the school. It is an event which has been and continues to be significant in the life of the community.

I have traced the history of “Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party” from its beginning in 1932 through the most recent one in 1986.

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Uncle Eli’s Quilting Party  »

By: Dorothy Cozart

Anna Catherine Hummell Markey Garnhart, (b. 1773, d. 1860) created a number of remarkable quilts during her life in Frederick, Maryland. In determining the relationship of two widely-separated quilts, locating a third, and unexpectedly finding a fourth probably made by Catherine, I discovered that not only did descendants treasure these quilts, taking them along as homes were established elsewhere, but also families remembered much lore about the maker.

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An Early Nineteenth Century Quiltmaker and Her Quilts  »

By: Cuesta Benberry

Quilt lore is replete with stories of quilters who made and sold quilts individually, or who made quilts “on shares” with another person, or who made quilts or be sold in a variety of formal and informal arrangements. Primarily in twentieth century America, there came into being an organized group method of making and selling quilts – the quilt cottage industry. Cottage industries were so named were so named because mush of the work was done in the small homes or cottages of the workers.

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Quilt Cottage Industries: A Chronicle  »

By: Bets Ramsey

From a region rich in botanical life, an analysis is made of the botanical theme as a source for quilt design. Floral and leaf designs appeared in more than one hundred of the one hundred ninety-nine appliqué quilts found in the survey of Tennessee quilts which totaled fourteen hundred twenty-five. Fifty-eight pieced quilts had the same themes, including twelve examples of the pieced rose. Earlier research of floral quilts examined from nearby states is added to the study which catalogs and compares the various types.

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Roses Real and Imaginary: Nineteenth Century Botanical Quilts of the Mid-South  »