By: Valerie J. Davis and Jackie Schweitzer

The Milwaukee Handicrafts Project (MHP) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin produced quilts and other textiles under a far-reaching governmental work program during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Among Works Progress Administration (WPA) handicraft projects, the MHP gained national recognition for its extemporary organization and efficiency; and customers and observers praised the quality and design excellence of MHP products. The MHP was administered by Elsa Ulbricht,

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The Policy of Good Design: Quilt Designs and Designers from the WPA Milwaukee Handicrafts Project, 1935-1942  »

By: Phyllis S. Herda

Women in the Cook Islands have produced stylistically distinct quilts, known collectively as tivaevae, for over a century. These pieced and appliques bedcovers are highly valued, ceremonial items presented at important social events just as indigenous textiles of beaten barkcloth and plaited fiber mats were in the past. In contemporary Cook Island culture, tivaevae are important and appropriate artifacts made by women, which fulfill kin obligations through exchange pirate artifacts made by women,

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Tivaevae: Women’s Quilting in the Cook Islands  »

By: Margaret M. Bingham

Highly specialized machine-quilting technology has evolved from its introduction in the early 1980s into a major influence on the contemporary quilting movement. Using the sophisticated quilting machines, entrepreneurial quilters have reintroduced professional quilting services. This paper presents results of research investigating professional machine quilters and their collaborative relationships with their customers. This pioneering study of the participants in this transformative movement examines the motives behind the quilters’

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The Collaborative Relationship between Professional Machine Quilters and Their Customers in the Contemporary Quilt Movement  »

By: Loretta B. Chase and Jan Coor-Pender Dodge

In 1863 the women of Dublin, New Hampshire, made a simple quilt of inscribed Nine-patch blocks and donated it to the United States Sanitary Commission in Boston. Of the hundreds of thousands of bedcovers distributed to soldiers during the Civil War, only a very few are known to have survived. The Dublin quilt serves today as a textile document of the women who made it,

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The Dublin Quilt: A Civil War Textile Document  »

By: Deborah E. Kraak

Textile manufactures have produced cotton fabrics printed in imitation of patchwork since at least the late-eighteenth century. Patchwork prints became particularly fashionable in the United States after the Centennial, flourishing between 1878 and 1900. The printed designs reflected the popularity and variety of actual patchwork patterns, including Log Cabin, geometric, and crazy designs. This study of late-nineteenth century American patchwork prints examines the historical development of the design,

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Patchwork Prints in America  »

By: Carolyn Ducey

In 1846 members of the Ladies Sewing Society of the first Baptist Church of Philadelphia presented Ann Rhees with an album quilt to honor her half-century of services to the church. The chintz applique quilt, inscribed with names, dates, and phrases, in one of five known surviving quilts made by the members of the Sewing Society. A careful study of the quilts, including a physical comparison of construction and style,

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Reminiscences of Women’s Work: Chintz Appliqué Album Quilts of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia  »

By: Aimee E. Newell

Quilt researchers can find it both difficult to interpret the symbolic language of Freemasonry, which appears on quilts from time to time, and confusing to know where to look for answers. This paper provides an overview of the history and structure of Freemasonry, explains common Masonic symbols, and explores the involvement of American women in the fraternity through an examination of quilts and other textiles in the collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum &

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Seeking Enlightenment: A Quilt Historian’s Guide to Freemasonry  »