It's All in the Pattern

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased a summer quilt with a sunburst pattern. It really brightens up my day to see the sun spread out on my bed. How did women come up with patterns like this? The patterns I’ve seen on quilts seem to be endless.

ANSWER: Quilts originated as a practical need but eventually they also became personal works of art. They served as window and door coverings. Hanging quilts on the dirt walls of a sod house made them seem more homelike. Quilts could serve as privacy walls, creating sleeping areas in a sod house or one room cabin. Quilts folded and laid on a board placed between two chairs became a sofa.

Patterned quilts have been around for a long time. While some appeared in Colonial times, the peak time for pattern quilts was the second half of the 19th century. Most quilts took hundreds of hours of work. Although some individuals did make the older ones, the most intricate ones were the result of a group of women sewing together in what became known as a “quilting bee.”

During the years between the American Revolution and the beginning of the westward migration, bedcovers blossomed with cotton cutouts salvaged from leftover bits of expensive European chintz. Women carefully snipped around the bird and floral motifs of the imported chintzes and appliquéd them on fields of plain domestic cloth to make the most of the patterned fabric available to them. Known as patchwork quilts, these served a practical purpose—to keep people warm in bed at night.

The pioneers spent up to a year preparing for their trip West. Besides drying and preserving foods and purchasing coffee and beans and barrels of sugar and flour, they packed dishes, clothing, utensils, needles and thread. And they made quilts. The emigration guides suggested that each family should bring enough bedding so that each man, woman and child would have two to three blankets or quilts. They packed some of their quilts in trunks and kept others for daily use.

But it was during the years of the westward journey, from 1840 to 1870, that women stitched the majority of patchwork quilts. As families moved west, fabric became scarce, so women creatively used what they had. While their Colonial forebearers used bits of leftover fabric, pioneer women also used pieces of old clothing and household linens. They stitched these scraps together in designated patterns with some pretty folksy names—the Hole in the Barn Door, Rocky Mountain Puzzle, Log Cabin, Galaxy of Stars, and hundreds of others that reflected the joys and sorrows of pioneer women’s lives. Only rarely did quilters use new pieces of cloth.

Another type of quilt popular at the time was the crazy quilt, a seemingly wild pattern made more coherent by a series of straight seams. Because of a lack of space and quilting supplies, individual pioneer women often assembled lap-sized quilts suitable for throwing over the legs when riding in a wagon or carriage in cold weather. 

The crazy quilt is the oldest quilt pattern. Early quilters used any scrap or remnant available, regardless of its color, design, or fabric type. They fitted and stitched together pieces of worn out clothing, women's calico dresses, men's pants and shirts, household linens, and other oddly shaped fabric scraps.

Crazy quilts, which Victorian women also used to decorate their parlors featured rich colors and textures and displayed fine embroidery skills. Victorian quilters filled their quilts with bits and pieces of their personal past; a piece of father's vest, a husband's tie, lace from a wedding veil, or ribbons commemorating political events. The result was a riot of color with a story behind each scrap.

The quilts of the late 1800s illustrate the extravagance of the Victorian age. In fact, the quilts that most typify those years aren’t really quilts at all, but thin parlor throws meant to thrill the eye—not warm the body. At home on the tabletops, sofa arms, and piano backs of overstuffed parlors, these throws had neither quilting nor batting. Yet, in their own splashy way, they were as much masterworks of American stitchery as their pioneer predecessors.

Pieced from the best silks, satins, and velvets—materials newly available to the growing middle class—the patchwork throws of this era are rich mosaics of color and texture, emphasizing proficiency in embroidery and the mastering of different types of stitches. Women's magazines of the day printed detailed embroidery instructions for anyone to follow.

Quilt patterns varied widely. While the patchwork quilt was usually more of an overall design, quilters created specific patterns that have been passed down to today. Four of them—the None Patch, the Pinwheel, the Double Wedding Ring, and the Eight Point Star, and all their variations–were particularly popular. 

The Nine Patch is one of the simplest and quickest quilts to sew, and because it was a good way to use up every small scrap of fabric available, it was used often. On the prairie, sewing was an essential skill. Young girls learned to sew blocks before they learned to read. At an early age, often as young as 3 or 4, girls were taught to piece simple blocks such as the Nine Patch. Many were very skilled at piecing a block by age 5.

The Pinwheel pattern first appeared in pioneer quilting during the 1840s. It developed as a  representation of the water pump windmills found on farms or small towns along the trails westward.  Water was not only necessary for cooking, drinking and bathing, but it was also a power source especially in timber and grain mills. Quilters considered the pinwheel quilt to not only be decorative, it also paid homage to the  windmill that allowed them to survive pioneer life.

During the early 20th century, women's tastes shifted from dark colors to a rainbow of pastel colors—mint greens, lemon yellows, and watermelon pinks. The Double Wedding Ring was a pattern that lent itself well to pastel fabrics. A feature of many Double Wedding Ring quilts was its scalloped edge created by the circles that made up the quilt.

The Double Wedding Ring pattern dates back to the 15th century. It was reminiscent of the “Gimmal ring,” a popular engagement ring in which the betrothed couple each wore one ring during their engagement, and then the rings were interlocked during the wedding ceremony and worn by the wife.

The quilt pattern can be found as early as the late 19th Century. It had long  long been a symbol of love and romance with its interlocking rings symbolizing marriage. The quilt was traditionally made by Mothers and grandmothers made these quilts for their children and gave them as gifts on their wedding day or anniversaries.

Stars were probably the most common pattern used on quilts. Homesteaders traveling West used the stars for guidance, plus they considered stars as religious symbols of their faith in God.

There were hundreds of star patterns. Some quilts had just one large radiating star, often called the Star of Bethlehem or Blazing Star, while in others, quilters used dozens of smaller stars. The simplest and most popular star pattern was the eight Point Star.

A star pattern wasn’t an easy design to cut or sew. Quilters had to be precise, as any inaccuracy in cutting or piecing became worse as the quilter added pieces. If poorly pieced, the quilt wouldn’t lie flat when finished. An intricate star pattern was one way for a quilter to show her needlework skills.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the "The World of Art Nouveau" in the 2022 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Under the Coverlets

QUESTION: I’ve long admired the colorful coverlets that are often on display in museum gift shops. Recently, I saw an exhibit of them at a museum in Indiana. The variety was astonishing. I know they were done on a special kind of loom, but I forget what it was called. Can you tell me more about how these coverlets were made and a bit about their history?

ANSWER: Coverlets originated in Europe. Early ones, woven on a four-harness type loom, didn’t have complex patterns like those made in the mid 19th century in the United States. Their unique designs were made possible by the invention of the “Jacquard” loom.

Household weavers usually women, produced these decorative and warm bed covers. They created simple but visually exciting geometric overshot coverlets. Complex, figural designs were more difficult to produce alone on the same loom. That changed in 1806 when Joseph Marie Jacquard of France invented a mechanical attachment that could be attached to most looms by professional male weavers. A series of punched cards  guided the raising and lowering of the warp threads to form complex designs. Repeated motifs could be endlessly varied and re-combined. Floral designs, birds, simple buildings and stars were common, with a central section usually framed by a border along the top, sides, and bottom. Many Jacquard coverlet weavers "signed" and dated their textiles on the decorative corner blocks at the bottom corners.

The Jacquard attachment first appeared in America in the early 1820s, probably by one of the many German, English and French hand weavers who had immigrated from their native countries in Europe. These immigrant weavers tended to settle in areas with populations of their own ethnic group and near sources of good quality wool. Many brought some type of Jacquard attachment or at least the experience to use one. Some even developed their own devices based on Jacquard's idea and patented them in the U.S.

The earliest American Jacquard coverlets appeared in New York and Pennsylvania in the late 1820s. As weavers saturated the market in the Eastern states, and weaving became more mechanized and moved into a factory setting, many weavers moved westward into Ohio and Indiana, and eventually to Illinois, looking for new markets as well as farmland. Raw wool and commercially spun yarns as well as natural and synthetic dyestuffs needed for weaving could easily be obtained throughout the state. The weavers settled in or near agrarian communities among people of shared backgrounds and familiar with folk motifs and designs used in coverlets, primarily those from Germany, France and England. The weavers made lasting contributions to the communities in which they settled, opening businesses and promoting weaving; perhaps most importantly, they brought a touch of color and technical design to an expanding 19th-century population on the western frontier.

Jacquard weavers derived the patterns and motifs they used from well-known folk traditions of Western Europe. The designs of most Illinois coverlets can be traced back to Ohio and Pennsylvania coverlets. The center field patterns were either a large, repeated symmetrical motif on two-piece ones or a centered medallion on single-width coverlets. Floral motifs appeared most frequently, in the Four Lilies and Sun-burst, Four Roses, Octagonal Four Roses, Four Leaves and Four Acorns, and Four Bellflowers patterns. Star and Sunburst designs were also common.

Illinois Jacquard coverlets, like their Pennsylvania counterparts, had borders along each side and the bottom. Popular traditional Germanic motifs include the distelfink, or thistle finch, and Grapevine. A corner block or name line identifies the weaver, his location, and usually the year of production.

Typically, weavers produced cotton coverlets for weddings and births. Wedding or bride coverlets or blankets were required items in a young woman’s hope chest. Starting around 1825, major towns had a resident weaver whose job it was to make blankets and accept work on commission. The weaver may have had an apprentice and the weaver’s loom was the site of his/her business dealings. Coverlets were double woven and produced with wool and imported indigo blue and madder red or brown dyes. A traditional early 19th-century woven coverlet would cost the buyer between $5 and $15. Coverlets were much more commonplace than quilts from about 1823 to the end of the Civil War in 1865.

Learn more about Jacquard coverlet and rug weaving by reading "Weaving their Way Into History" in The Antiques Almanac. This is the story of a family who has kept Jacquard coverlet weaving alive in Pennsylvania.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the early 20th century in the Fall 2018 Edition, "20th Century Ltd.," online now.