quiltersmuse.com Blog

Tonight, at 10:28 p.m., I have been thinking about the power of the printed word and how it stays with us, even if/when it is not true. A few weeks ago, I made an outrageous statement that irritated a few people who belong to a certain list. I simply stated that I do not read historical novels because I don’t want to “pollute” my mind. My intention was clear cut. I was not putting down the reading selections of anyone else. It was an “I” statement. I only want to read history that is actually true. In the past, I certainly have enjoyed historical novels, especially one of the most famous ones, Gone with the Wind, which I read in high school and saw the movie about the same time.

It is a challenge to read and to write history. Sometimes, it is not what we say, but what we leave out, that make what we have said an incorrect statement. As history gets rewritten, it often becomes wrong and the intent of the original writer is lost in the rewriting of a story. That is partially due to the loss of infused meanings due to the manner of speech alignments and patterning. In other words, how one states something is as important as what is said. In speaking out loud with each other, we can infer the emotional state of the speaker by listening to verbal clues such as loudness of speech, its rapidity, and we can see other non-verbal cues such as waving one’s hands in the air, making a fist, or turning red in the face. We don’t have the advantage of visual clues in the written word.

The main reason I am considering this subject of history and how it is imparted is that I am recalling many mistakes that have been made in books and magazine articles about quilt history, for nearly 100 years. Mistakes continue today. One recurring one surrounds the idea that quilting started in the United States, and in colonial times, and that it began with colonists cutting up their tattered garments to make quilts out of used clothing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In my latest e-book, Straight Talk About Quilt Care II, I speak about the earliest extant examples of quilts. They were not pieced, any more than the few quilts made during the colonial period in America were, a period that ended, ostensibly, in 1776, when America became a country. A certain writer claims that pieced blocks have their roots in colonial America. It would be a stretch for anyone to prove that point. Wholecloth quilts, either brought with the colonists, or made here, ruled the day during the time period we consider to be colonial times.

The trouble with people getting information “wrong,” is that students and researchers often access the writings of those who have previously investigated a subject. In gathering “facts” from books, they simply repeat the same mistakes, over and over and over again. That is one reason why the Underground Railroad Secret Quilt Code continues to be promoted in some circles. A lot of advertising was given to the false concept. A certain historian credits Raymond Dobard, Jr., Ph.D. with being the first to publish a book about the “code.” That is not true either.

If you recall, the idea of a secret quilt code to assist escaping slaves was first promoted in a fictional book for children in 1982. (Files on my website describe the whole situation). As far as I know, I was the first to create an illustrated description and explanation of why the quilt code did not add up, providing examples of each purported quilt block in the code, even if I had to create the quilt block myself. Initially, that article, a 4,000 word essay, was printed in a newspaper. Later, I wrote two more articles for The Quilter magazine, and NeedleArts magazine offered their readers a 10 page summary, based on my initial article. As far as I know, my newspaper disputation was the first in print for a mainstream America audience.

Recently, I was told that there is a great deal of pressure to bring academic writings to the point of publication. For that reason, sometimes work is not as thorough or exact as it could be. I could continue pointing out errors printed in books, etc., but I will not.

If you are a writer, please pay attention. Do not take anything for granted, or write it down because you “assume” it to be true. Please be more careful and check your facts, because in the long run, more damage will be done if you get it wrong. Remember this: If you don’t know something, it is not a sin to ask someone who does know, or to do more research. In the cases cited above, a simple visit to my website would have cleared up some misinformation before it made its way into gigantic tomes of the “latest” books on quilt history.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications