By: Xenia E. Cord 

Based on an unpublished, handwritten account book maintained by William McCormick from 1751 through 1782, this research reconstructs the life of a Virginian in southwestern Pennsylvania who prospered by cooperative commerce. Trained as a weaver of linen goods, McCormick practiced this craft when necessary, also establishing himself as a frontiersman, ranger, and teamster hauling commodities between Winchester, Virginia, and Fort Pitt. He was responsible for considerable textile production during the Revolution,

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Textiles and Cooperative Commerce in Colonial America: The Example of William McCormick  »

By: Susan Price Miller 

The name Hope Winslow in the title of a 1933 catalog is probably better known than the little recognized man who produced the book and designed some unique twentieth-century pieced quilt patterns. Hubert Ver Mehren of Des Moines, Iowa, marketed his needlework items through magazines, newspapers, and mail-order catalogs. Examination of a dozen newspapers and periodicals and seven versions of his books revealed the growth of Ver Mehren’s work in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Hubert Ver Mehren and Home Art Studios  »

By: Ethel Ewert Abrahams and Rachel K. Pannabecker 

Some of the most unusual textiles in American quiltmaking are fabric novelties promoting tobacco consumption in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These novelties include silk ribbons wrapped around cigars as well as printed silk fabrics and cotton flannels that were inserted in tobacco packaging or distributed as premiums. This research used tobacco industry history, information from women’s magazines, and tobacco novelty quilts to explore the cigar-ribbon quilt which emerged as a grassroots creation using textiles publicizing cigar brands,

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“Better Choose Me”: Addictions to Tobacco, Collecting, and Quilting, 1880-1920  »

By: Phyllis S. Herda 

The western Polynesian islands of Tonga have a long tradition of textiles (barkcloth and fine plaited mats) being valued as items of significance and wealth. Recently Tongan women have expanded this textile repertoire to include machine-made quilts and an identifiable Tongan style of quilts is emerging. Tongan quilts are now a prominent feature of grave decorations. In addition, they are displayed and presented at a wide variety of functions including births,

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Creating a New Tradition: Quilting in Tonga  »

By: Marsha MacDowell

Embedded in every quilt are many, many stories. Quilts contain stories about the quiltmaker; stories about why, when, and how the quilt was made and used; stories about where the fabric and patterns were acquired; the list of stories goes on. Some stories are known only through other sources such as household or diary accounts, state quilt inventory records, manufacturing records of the production of fabrics or patterns,

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Seminar Keynote Address – Quilts and Their Stories: Revealing a Hidden History  »

By: Lisa Gabbert 

The sensory aspects of fabric, particularly its color, hand, and the ways ill which it is used are aspects of tile creative process in quilting that deserve greater scholarly attention. Emphasizing the sensory rather than the philosophical meanings of the term “aesthetic,” this paper looks at the relationship between creativity, sensory experience, and artistic medium in a group of quilters in central Idaho. Drawing primarily on the words of the quilters themselves,

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“Petting the Fabric”: Medium and the Creative Process  »

By: Laurel Horton 

A newspaper report of a local quilting event in Seneca, South Carolina, in 1910, recorded the participation of a group of eight women. The event is examined within the context of other local social events and quilting activities in an attempt to determine the significance of this event for its participants. The event narrative reveals the existence of a practical joke performed by the hostess as part of her enactment of an “old-fashioned quilting.”

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An “Old-Fashioned Quilting” in 1910  »