Quilts in an Economic Context: A New Blog

A new blog offering a historical perspective on making a living making quilts.
In which I ramble on about quilts and economics. I've been thinking quite a bit lately about where quilts come from and I realize I've had to unlearn much of my original thinking, picked up years ago when I first became interested in quilts.

In the early to mid-20th century popular quilt writing was valued more for mythology than accuracy. Nostalgia for an imagined colonial and pioneer past fed a sense of national pride. Patchwork quilts were  survivors that seemed to support that argument. Curators, popular historians and pattern companies shaped their stories to fit the myth.

In her 1915 book Marie Webster set the standard for thinking about 19th-century quilts by quoting another author:

 "Only he who knows what it means to hew a home out of the forest... and witness the devotedness that gathers around the old log schoolhouse and the pathos of a grave in the wilderness, can understand how sobriety, decency, age, devoutness, beauty and power belong to the story of those who began the mighty task of changing the wild west..."

"Old Ladies Quilting" from Webster's book

Not only were they always thrifty they were generally old.

Webster agreed:  "The comforts of the family depended upon the thrift, energy and thoughtfulness of the women. ..All day in the frontier cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, the clack of the loom or the click of the knitting needles."

Ruby Short McKim also "rambled with romance" as she noted in her book One Hundred and One Patchwork Patterns.

"To salvage beauty and usefulness from coarse waste material was the everyday accomplishment of our pioneer mothers who hooked rugs and pieced quilts.
"Some quilt names are of pioneer ancestry with a breath of dare and danger like 'Bear's Paw,' 'Crossed Canoes,' 'Indian Trail.' 'Prairie Queen.' "

Another quote from Webster: “We used to hear a great deal about the sad and lonely fate of the western farmer’s wife..."

No romantic story was too far-fetched.

"Shortly after the treaty of Paris [1898] whereby the Philippines were surrendered to the United States by Spain, a pioneer woman of northern California created and named this design for a coverlet. Before the spread was finished she sent one square to a sister in the east. From there and the west coast the pattern migrated in several directions." Nancy Cabot, Chicago Tribune, 1935.

Mary McElwain sold Bear's Paw quilts in the 1930s with a short story about a husky pioneer boyfriend hiding from a bear in a tree in the 1820s, copied from Ruth Finley.

I am wallowing in nostalgia and over-the-top copy writing here mainly to illustrate the point that we owe our standard image of the 19th century quiltmaker to these writers.

The image: An isolated woman working alone, recycling scraps from her ragbag, clever and artistic enough to imagine new patterns named for geese, bears and turkeys as she glanced out her cabin door at the wildlife. Occasionally finding respite from her solitary life in a group quilting bee.

Photo from Carlie Sexton pattern catalog about 1925

One woman: one quilt ---from pattern idea through ragbag to binding---with a little neighborly assistance in the quilting.

Money was never mentioned (you didn't need money if you were thrifty enough, apparently.)

No one ever shopped in a city store, sold a pattern, bought a bundle of scraps, hired someone to mark her quilt top, made up fabric kits or taught patchwork in a needlework class. Women did not work for pay, and they certainly didn't create time-honored American crafts for money.

The irony here is that Webster, McElwain, Finley, McKim and Nancy Cabot [whole real name was Loretta Leitner] each made a living doing many of those activities:

• Writing about needlework
• Lecturing about quilt history
• Marking fabric and tops
• Selling patterns
• Making up kits of fabric
• Basting tops
• And selling finished quilts

Every one of those authors painted a false picture of the past by ignoring the economic and commercial aspects of women's needlework at which she herself was succeeding admirably.

Plus: I wanna know: Did city dwellers ever make quilts?

Dutch housewives making log cabin quilts in log cabins on the western frontier... wholesome history from Mary McElwain's aptly named Romance of the Village Quilts

See the whole booklet with all it's paradoxes here at the Quilt Index:
http://www.quiltindex.org/ephemera_full_display.php?kid=1E-A3-5C7

So sign up for email notices when I post here. Or check back every week or two to see a new rant.