By: Melissa Jurgena 

For the author, what began as a graduate class assignment in material-culture studies soon became a grand adventure in friendship and discovery. The project involved researching a large friendship quilt that had little accompanying information to determine its origin. The author used several methods of investigation, beginning with a formal artifact analysis of the fabrics and construction, followed by digital image enhancement, Internet searches, telephone interviews, and even on-site research to trace the history of the quilt.

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She Hath Done What She Could: Discovering Memories on a New York Friendship Quilt  »

By: Marilyn Goldman 

The Wilkinson Sisters, Iona and Rosalie, were successful business women dedicated to art and excellence. Supported and encouraged by the wealthy, cultured Jewish citizens of the community, the Ligonier, Indiana, sisters endeavored to produce only the finest, most original, whole-cloth quilts to sell to an elite clientele world-wide. They thought of themselves as artists, preferring unique quilting designs on the finest solid-colored fabrics. Their quilts date from 1908 through the 1940s and dovetail the changes in home decoration of these eras.

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The Wilkinson Quilt Company: “America’s Original Makers of Fine Quilts”  »

By: Kim M. King 

Quiltmakers have long expressed the need to make sense of and act on their changing environment. Historically, quiltmakers fostered a sense of community through their craft. Pioneer women who followed their husbands westward, for example, used friendship quilts to maintain ties with friends and family back home. Technology plays a key role in determining the shape a community takes. The Internet has had a huge impact on the way quiltmakers interact with each other.

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Quiltmakers’ Online Communities  »

By: Judy Elsley 

A surprisingly wide range and number of children’s books feature a quilt or quilter, from illustrated pre-reading books with no words to novels written for adolescents. This paper analyzed these books in order to discover the cultural values represented in children’s fiction that features quilts and quilters.

The discussion moves from cultural micro to cultural macro, starting with books that focus on a particular domestic situation in the home,

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Read Me a Story: Cultural Values in Children’s Quilt Fiction  »

By: Connie J. Nordstrom

One nineteenth-century Pot of Flowers quilt pattern in the red and green floral appliqué tradition has made a remarkable journey through time. The history of American quiltmakers and their quilts clearly shows that certain patterns appealed and survived the passage of time, while others appeared only briefly. Why and how this design survived and where it came from may always be an enigma, but this Pot of Flowers arrangement had an intrinsic allure that prevailed over obstacles that easily could have barred the transfer of the design.

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One Pot of Flowers Quilt Pattern – Blossoming Through Centuries  »

By: Carolyn O’Bagy Davis 

Fannie Springer Schumacher of Mitchell, Nebraska, helped organize the Busy Bee Club in1920. The club’s goals included moral improvement and sharing information, but the primary activity of the twice-monthly meetings was stitching quilts (most often in Fannie’s roomy
wood-frame farmhouse).

Nearly seven decades of club minutes are still in existence. Analysis of these extensive records provided valuable insights into the role of rural women’s clubs of the early twentieth century.

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Fannie and the Busy Bees  »