Quilts

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Quilts

• 19th through 20th Centuries

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The year is 1830

• It is a cold winter night and you are tired and
  have just snuggled down into your bed with
  several quilts piled up on top of you.
• If you are a boy, you have been up before the sun
  and have spent most of the day performing heavy
  manual work that includes chopping wood for the
  cook stove and fireplace to keep you warm and
  fed.
• You have not had any idle time.

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• If you are a girl, you have also started working
  before the sun came up tending to animals,
  cooking, washing, cleaning and taking care of
  younger siblings.
• Those quilts you are sleeping under are all
  lovingly handmade and are more that utilitarian
  blankets that are keeping you warm.

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Believe it or not.

• They are works of art.

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Quilts

• Quilts and other cloth-based narrative art are
  part of many cultures. Made by hand -- often
  collaboratively -- using familiar materials such
  as scraps of clothing, quilts are both personal
  and communal objects.
• Quilting continues to be largely a home-based
  form of women's artistic expression.

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• Quilts can be works of art as well as tell
  stories through pictures.
• They also tell a story about their creators and
  about the historical and cultural context of
  their creation (quilting bees, historical and
  personal events) through the choices made in
  design, material, and content.

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• In 1842, John Logan of McDowell County, North
  Carolina put Hannah, a twelve year old slave
  girl, behind his daughter, Margaret, on her
  horse.
• He then put Pharoah, a twelve year old slave boy,
  behind his new son-in-law, Thomas Young Greenlee,
  on his horse.

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• John said, "These are your wedding gifts."
• Hannah became a house servant and Pharoah became
  a blacksmith.
• They later married and took their new owners
  surname.

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• During the days of the War between the States,
  the Underground Railroad was active through the
  very heart of McDowell County.
• Hannah pieced this quilt during those harrowing
  days, stitching into the pieces African symbols
  which served as messages and directions to
  would-be travelers on the 'railroad".

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• Some of the symbols are recognized as characters
  of the Vai Syllabary, an African alphabet.

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• Hannah pieced the quilt by hand using scrap
  materials of homespun cotton and wool, with some
  silk and velvet scraps interspersed.

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• The quilt lining was left unfinished until Emma
  "Em" Greenlee, Hannah's daughter, completed it in
  1895.

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• We know little about them beyond this, except
  that the masterful quilt reproduced here was
  begun by Hannah Greenlee, perhaps in the 1880s,
  and finished by her daughter Emm in 1896,
  sometime after Hannahs death.

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• Hannah Greenlees quilt is made of irregular
  scraps of fabricsome of them homespunthat are
  stitched together in the Crazy pattern developed
  in Victorian England and popular in America in
  the second half of the nineteenth century.

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• As a freedwoman after the war, Hannah probably
  continued the type of work she performed as a
  house servant
• cooking, cleaning, and sewing.

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• She may have intended to sell or give the quilt
  to her previous owners, since it remained with
  that family until they donated it to North
  Carolinas Historic Carson House.

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• The quilt has been recognized in numerous
  publications including
• The North Carolina Quilt Project,
• The Maryland Sun News Artistry Knew No Bondage,
• Janice Cole Gibson's Carson House Quilts in
  Quilt World,
• Stitched From the Soul Slave Quilts of the
  Antebellum South.

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• A unique and beautiful appliquéd quilt of silk
  chintz imported from France was carefully sewn in
  1810 by Kadella, the Carson family slave who
  became the seamstress for the family.

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• The slave of Colonel John Carson, Kadella, made
  the quilt as a celebration of his marriage.
• She created the quilt according to traditional
  European appliqué standards of displaying ornate
  French lace in intricate patterns.

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• However, she also included African tradition in
  her quilt by cross-stitching long, vertical,
  strip-like lines onto the quilt.

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• Legend has it that Kadella was the daughter of an
  African Chieftain, and thus a princess in her
  homeland.
• She was taken to Barbados by slave traders, where
  she was purchased by Col. John Carson and brought
  to his plantation in McDowell County.
• Kadella was quite beautiful, and because she was
  considered royalty in her home country, the other
  slaves on the Carson plantation revered her.

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• When it was necessary for her to travel from the
  slave quarters to the big house, her fellow
  slaves carried her about on a palanquin.
  (Rickshaw)
• She became a favorite of the Carsons and it was
  soon learned that she was quite accomplished at
  sewing.

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• She was given a special little house built
  especially for her across the river from the
  other slave quarters near the Carson family home
  and lived her life with the Carsons, making all
  the quilts and clothing for the family.
• She was kept away from difficult labor and
  allowed to sew and knit.

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• Kadella was well respected and loved not only by
  her master but by fellow slaves as well.
• Although never found, Kadella is said also to
  have produced one African strip-style quilt for
  each of her sons who were sent away because of
  their shameful likeness to their master John
  Carson.

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• Another special quilt, stitched in small pieces
  called a crazy quilt pattern was made by the
  mother of a Methodist minister who traveled to
  Oklahoma with the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears.
  
• It is said that this quilt comforted many Native
  Americans on this infamous journey.
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Jane and Rebecca Bond

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• Slave woman Jane Bond is braiding the hair of her
  mistress Rebecca. Although most likely they posed
  for the photograph, both women took pride in
  making dresses for one another and braiding one
  another's hair.
• Jane Bond was born a slave in Kentucky, 1828. She
  was originally the property of Edward Fletcher
  Arthur. He gave her to his daughter Belinda as a
  wedding present in 1848.

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• The two women did not however get along very well
  and after the birth of the second son between
  Jane and Belinda's preacher husband Preston, Jane
  was sent back to her original owner.
• Jane was then given to Preston's sister Rebecca.
• The two formed a very close friendship and shared
  much of their lives, including quilting. The two
  quilts below are two of the remaining quilts from
  over twenty that they made together for their
  children.

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• Although both are traditional European strict
  patterns, they are made with bright contrasting
  colors and even the strict patterns are deviated
  from as seen in four of the squares in the quilt
  on the right.

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Story Quilts

• Story quilts often reflect the personal life of
  the one who created them.  Harriet Powers was
  born into slavery in 1837 and married at the age
  of eighteen. 
• We do not know what her childhood was like since
  it was not recorded however, she recorded some
  of her life as an African American slave woman in
  a story quilt. 
• Harriet Powers also quilted Bible stories one
  is a priceless museum piece that resides at the
  Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

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• Harriet Powers created two quilts which are the
  best known and well preserved examples of
  Southern American quilting tradition still in
  existence.
• Using the traditional African appliqué technique
  along with European record keeping and biblical
  reference traditions, Harriet records on her
  quilts local historical legend, Bible stories,
  and astronomical phenomena.

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Harriet Powers Story Quilt

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• Her quilts were first seen at a crafts fair by an
  artist, a Southern white woman named Jennie
  Smith.
• Ms. Smith, who kept a diary and upon first
  meeting Harriet, recalls -- "I found the owner, a
  negro woman, who lived in the country on a little
  farm whereon she and her husband made a
  respectable living.
• She is about sixty five years old, of a clear
  ginger cake color, and is a very clean and
  interesting woman who loves to talk of her 'old
  miss' and life 'befo de wah.'

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• At first Harriet Powers was unwilling to sell her
  quilts to Ms. Smith.
• Yet when she and her family came into financial
  difficulty she agreed to sell them.

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• Ms Smith writes -- " Last year I sent her word
  that I would buy it if she still wanted to
  dispose of it. She arrived one afternoon in front
  of my door in an ox-cart with the precious burden
  in her lap encased in a clean flour sack, which
  was still enveloped in a crocus sack. She offered
  it for ten dollars, but I told her I only had
  five to give.

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• After going out consulting with her husband she
  returned and said 'Owin to de hardness of de
  times, my ole man lows I'd better tech hit.' Not
  being a new woman she obeyed. After giving me a
  full description of each scene with great
  earnestness, she departed but has been back
  several times to visit the darling offspring of
  her brain.

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• She was only in measure consoled for its loss
  when I promised to save her all my scraps."
  Although it was certainly painful for Mrs. Powers
  to sell her quilts, doing so she thus,
  unknowingly, preserved them for future
  generations.

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Enlargement

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Harriet Powers

• The photograph, made about 1897, depicts her
  wearing a special apron with images of a moon,
  cross, and sun or shooting star. Celestial bodies
  such as these appear repeatedly in her quilts,
  indicating their importance to her.

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Harriet Powers Bible Quilt

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• This quilt looks very different from quilts made
  in the colonial period, when such items were
  confined to homes of the wealthy, where women had
  leisure time to devote to complicated needlework.

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• In colonial whole-cloth quilts, for example, the
  top was one single piece whose only decoration
  was the pattern of the stitching itself.

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• In another type, printed images of flowers and
  other motifs were cut out of expensive imported
  fabrics and sewn (appliquéd) to the top as
  decoration.

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Hasbrouck family vignette Ulster County, NY.
Mid-19th century.

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Enlargement

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• Many early Crazy quilts were made of luxury
  materials like silk, velvet, and satin.
• The random pattern is a flexible and thrifty way
  to construct a quilt, permitting small scraps of
  any size or shape to be used.

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Crazyc. 1884-1890

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• The design can be worked in an overall pattern
  oras in Greenlees quiltin separate squares
  that are then combined in a grid.

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• Because the grid adds a degree of order to the
  chaos, this type is known as a Contained Crazy.

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• In each square of her quilt, numerous small
  strips are joined into ladders that lean this way
  and that.

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• These stacked, colored bands resemble a type of
  traditional textile made in Ghana and the Ivory
  Coast called kente, in which bars of color and
  pattern are woven in thin strips that are then
  joined side to side to make wider cloth.

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• Many scholars believe that elements of this
  African tradition, especially its aesthetic
  preference for asymmetry, inventiveness, and
  irregular blocks of bright color, live on in many
  African American quilts.

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• Each square of Greenlees quilt is a separate
  abstract composition that is constantly changing
  depending on the direction from which it is
  viewed.

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Fancy stitching

• Sometimes following the outlines of the piecing,
  sometimes independent of themcreates another
  level of patterning as do the designs within the
  separate scraps of cloth.

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• As in most quilts, the top layer is attached to
  two more beneath with stitching (quilting) that
  goes through all three.

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• The bottom layer, called the liner, can be plain
  or decorated to make the quilt reversible.

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• Sandwiched between the top and liner is the layer
  of insulation, called filling or batting, that
  traps pockets of air to give the quilt its warmth.

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• The invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the
  opening of a textile factory in Waltham,
  Massachusetts, in 1814, and the development of
  the power loom would make domestic printed
  fabrics widely available and affordable.

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• By the 1840s, women were purchasing commercially
  printed fabric to sew rather than weave the
  fabrics themselves.

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Unknown pattern, c. 1853, New York

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• Quilt patterns multiplied and were spread by
  family and friends, printed in ladies magazines,
  and ordered through catalogs.

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Worsted c. 1820-1840 New Hampshire

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• The introduction of the sewing machine in the
  second half of the nineteenth century made sewing
  faster.

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• In addition to still-usable parts of old clothes,
  scraps left over from a dress for the first day
  of school or Fathers Sunday shirt were saved to
  make quilts that were rich with personal
  memories.

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• Susan Noakes McCord was a farmwife who lived in
  McCordsville, Indiana. She raised vegetables,
  chickens, and seven children, and still found
  time between chores to make more than a dozen
  quilts.

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• Many of her creations were based on standard
  quilt patterns that she transformed.

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• This quilt, like Greenlees, is a Contained Crazy
  quilt, but instead of rectangular bars, wedges of
  fabric are joined to form irregular wheels.

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(No Transcript)
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• The pattern is based on one called Grandmothers
  Fan, in which each uniform block of the quilt
  contains a fan set in the same corner.

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• McCord varied the size of the fans and set them
  in all four corners of most blocks, aligning them
  to form fractured gears that twirl across the
  surface.

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Nothing is still .

• Wheels struggle to maintain their symmetry and
  rims wander off to do-si-do with other discs.
  Everywhere there is the nervous tremor of the
  zig-zag stitching.

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• Some of the most accomplished quilting is found
  in Amish examples made in Lancaster County,
  Pennsylvania, from the late-nineteenth to the
  mid-twentieth century.

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• Before the incorporation of synthetic materials
  around 1940, Amish quilts tended to be made of
  fine wool.

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• These quilts were given only a thin layer of
  filler, making delicate needlework possible.
• Although the stitches on these quilts average
  from nine to eleven per inch, stitches as small
  as eighteen to twenty per inch have been used
  (most quilts average six to eight stitches).

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• The Amish trace their lineal descent from the
  Anabaptist movement, which arose in the early
  1500s as a result of the Protestant Reformation.

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• Anabaptists were pacifists who practiced adult
  baptism exclusively.
• The largest Anabaptist sect was Mennonite, named
  for founder Menno Simons.
• In 1693, a group of Mennonites led by Jacob
  Ammann, seeking a stricter observance of their
  religion, broke away to become the Amish.

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• Heavily persecuted, the Amish were drawn to
  America by the religious tolerance promoted by
  William Penn.
• In the 1730s, they established their first
  sizeable communities in Lancaster County,
  Pennsylvania.

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• At the core of Amish life are religion,
  community, and family.
• The Amish, who live in small communities, value
  conformity to communal rule (the Ordnung), which
  varies according to local custom.

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• Much of the technology developed since the
  Industrial Revolution is avoided.

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• They aspire to a life of non-violence,
  simplicity, and humility
• Anything considered vain or reminiscent of the
  military (such as buttons or moustaches) is
  rejected.

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• Amish clothing is generally patterned on
  late-nineteenth century rural farm attire.

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• Mens suits are black or dark blue, and simply
  cut.
• Womens dress is made in a variety of solid
  colors (generally avoiding bright red, orange,
  yellow, or pink) and usually includes some form
  of head covering.

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• Amish houses are modest, and quilts provide not
  only pattern and bold color but an outlet for
  womens creativity.

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• Amish quilts made in Lancaster County between
  approximately1875 and 1950 are noted for their
  rich, solid colors, symmetrical design, and
  emphasis on a central motif
• characteristics that give the compositions a
  sense of quiet grandeur.

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• Within a limited number of quilt patterns, the
  color choices allowed by the restrictions of the
  Bishop (the communally elected leader of a
  district), may nevertheless permit a broad range
  of visual effects.

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• The strong color contrast in two of the quilts
  (10-B.3 and 10-B.4) causes the bars to begin to
  quiver as you look at them.

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In another, slender bars will appear to shift.
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• The pulsing energy of the star quilt is held in
  check by the wide purple border that just touches
  the tips of its points.

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• Many quilts are enriched with stitches in one or
  more patterns diamond shapes, feathers,
  wreaths, vines, and flowers that add another
  layer of technical and visual complexity.

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• Although earlier quilts like those reproduced
  here are thought to be the result of individual
  efforts among the Lancaster County Amish, in more
  recent times women often have gathered together
  to share their needle working skills in community
  events called quilting bees or frolics.

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• Quilts have proved to be the perfect canvas for
  self expression. They serve as a new way of
  seeing imagining the possibilities contained in
  a bolt of fabric, exploring new definitions for
  what a quilt can be.
• From the Amish quilts of Lancaster County,
  Pennsylvania with their large fields of color to
  the contemporary work of such artists as Nancy
  Crow and Michael James, quilt makers have
  continually pushed the boundaries of this medium
  as they explore new directions for this American
  craft.

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Nancy Crows Quilt

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Log Cabin c.1893 Gertrude Buchner, Maquoketa,
Iowa

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Lily (variation) c. 1855-1870 Waynesboro,
Pennsylvania

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Star of Bethlehem c.1832 Hannah Huxley, Kentucky

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c. 1850New England

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Kansas, c. 1920-1940, Louisville, Kentucky

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Blocks, c. 1850-1860, New York

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Butterflies, c. 1940-1950, Alabama 

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Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

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Essay Question 1

• Why did women make quilts? (at least
• 2 reasons)

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Essay Question 2

• Why did quilters often sew small bits of fabric
  together rather than using one large piece of
  material?

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Essay Question 3

• How could a quilt record a familys history?

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Essay Question 4

• What 19th century developments made it easier for
  American women to make quilts.
• (There are at lease 5 reasons)