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Patchwork quilt from Lambertville, New Jersey

I wish I had a dollar for every book reference or speaker whom I have heard wistfully and nostalgically describing quilting as a scrap bag affair. This idea overlooks the fact that the American quilt tradition can be traced directly to England.

Dorothy Osler, well-respected quilt historian and book author from the UK has these words about quilting in the past in her book, Quilting:

Quilting has a long history, but that history is obscured by myth and romanticism. What does seem clear is that quilting techniques were well established in the countries of the Middle and Far East before arriving in Europe in the Middle Ages. By the end of the 16th century, European quilting was in the hands of professionals, who produced quilts and quilted garments in costly fabrics such as silk and satin for use by the rich and powerful, and in woollen homespun fabrics for warmth and protection.

She goes on to say that trade with the Far East in the 17th century yielded Indian chintzes and palampores.

These were “whole cloth” pieces of cloth. The chintz fabric was so expensive, it was often cut up to yield smaller motifs of flowers, etc. The palampores were hand-painted with a penciling type of method to create the green colors by combining yellow and blue. These color pieces were kept whole, as a unit.

Well-to-do ladies of leisure, and/or paid artisans who marked and quilted whole cloth quilts, were the arbiters of tastes in quilting. There, two specific styles of quilting predominated: medallion style quilts and whole cloth quilts.

First, there is the “whole-cloth” quilt tradition which is described more than adequately on my website, in a number of separate, but linked files. In this type of quilt, there are three layers that are held together with quilting stitches. The top is always the same fabric. Most of the time, it is comprised of pieces of the same fabric, when a bed quilt was the object under construction.

Second of all, the English were fond of creating “Medallion” quilts, in which the center medallion was the focal point and the rest of the quilt secondary to it.

Barbara Brackman, quilt historian, has stated that quilts composed of pieced blocks set into rows were not common until the middle of the 19th century (mid-1800s, that is).

Presumably, when Alice Morse Earle states, “I know of a ten days’ quilting bee in Narragansett (RI) in 1752,” (fabric type unspecified), she is referring to the quilting of something other than a pieced quilt. In her book, Home Life in Colonial Days, written in 1898, she mentions a wool quilt made of old wool petticoats and worn out wool flannel sheets. In yet a third reference, she talks about a silk quilt that was not finished until 1795. Read my file about quilting bees.

Silk and wool are not generally used for patchwork, as we think of it, today. When we start trying to assign patchwork to an earlier time, we must take into consideration the availability of any textiles, when the Pilgrims and Puritans first came to America. We also should think about availability of time to the women who had their hands full with just surviving.

We seem to have developed a selective memory and one that does not look at what is true about history. We just re-invent quilt history to fit a mold of our own creation. Barbara Brackman notes only thirteen quilts, in collections, that were pieced during the 18th century (1700s), ranging from 177? to 1798. Read the list of them at: Womenfolk – “Dated Examples of 18th Century Quilts.”

Please do not assume that patchwork was created, to any great extent, early than mid-18th century. Most of the early quilts I have seen in New England have not been a total scrap bag effort, except for some hexagonal mosaic quilts, and of course, late 19th century Crazy Quilts. To create consistent designs require, by necessity, fabrics in adequate amounts to create repetition and borders. Cutting up large pieces of cloth to do piecework has been a long standing tradition. Quilting seems to have never really been only the creative, make-do work of the very poor.

Dates to Note:

A silk patchwork coverlet dated 1718 is signed by the maker. This is an artifact from the “Brown family of Aldbourne.”

The oldest surviving North American patchwork quilt, made in 1726, is located in Montreal at the McCord Museum.

The earliest surviving, medallion style, American quilt was made in Maine and is dated 1785 and signed by “ANNA TUELS.” This quilt is held at the Hartford (CT) Athaeneum.

This is not to say that piecework was a predominant way of constructing quilts, in general. Pieced blocks in Wales, Great Britain, and America seem to have developed to a larger extent in the nineteenth century. Wales has a new “Centre for Quilts.”

The study of the origins and development of quilting, in all its facets, and in the various regions of the country, as well as internationally, is an intriguing pastime. We are so caught up in what we’d like to think, we often fail to recognize the facts. In this case, patchwork developed more slowly than one would imagine, and in New England, involved wool, linen, silk, and cotton, most of which had to be imported initially.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications