Youth & Family News - Textile Traditions

This week we’re going to take a short break from talking about carriages and automobiles to focus on the subject of our upcoming program on Saturday, July 23, from noon to 4 PM: Textiles Traditions: A Modern Quilting Bee.

One of the (good) consequences of the boom in textile mills and the availability of many kinds of fabrics was that people across the world and the U.S. took up sewing, embroidery, and quilting to make beautiful and useful items for their homes. Textile mills helped to change more than people’s work lives -- they changed how people lived in their homes. Quilting became a popular method of making bed coverings for the home.

So, what is Quilting?

When we think about quilting certain ideas come to mind: Frugal early American housewives using the scraps of materials left over from making clothing and household goods, to piece together useful and appealing bed coverings to stay warm in chilly homes. The truth of the matter is a little more complicated than that.

The word “quilting” refers to the act of stitching layers of fabric together with a filler or batting in the middle, making a thicker material. Sewing small pieces of fabric together in intricate patterns is called piecing or patchwork and involves different sewing skills; we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

Quilting allowed people to create a variety of rugs, bed covers, and clothing items that were thicker and warmer than single pieces of fabric. As well, the stitches used to attach the layers of fabric and hold the filling in place could be simple rows of stitches or elaborate decorative patterns.

Short History of Quilting

While the word “quilt” was first used in Europe in the 1200s, the process is much older and has been found in every part of the world. One of the earliest examples of quilting can be found on an Egyptian carved ivory figure—dating to about 5,000 years ago. A Mongolian floor covering from around 2,000 years ago was discovered by archaeologists.

Quilting probably came to Europe in the 1100s to 1200s as the Crusaders came back from the Middle East, bringing with them new objects, techniques, and knowledge from the many cultures they had encountered across the Muslim world. Some of the earliest quilted pieces in Europe were armor—the extra thickness and stiffness of the quilted garments provided some extra protection from weapons in battle for those who could not afford metal armor.

Quilt, ca.1855–60, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Quilting in the Americas

The most common kinds of bed coverings before the 1800s were single cloth quilts, and applique quilts which were made from the 1200’s on in Europe and then the Americas after colonization. These quilts showcased a piece of fabric used to top the bedcover as well as the quilted stitching.

While pieced or patchwork quilts began to appear in the 1700s in Great Britain and the Americas, they truly took off and became more popular in the mid-1800s as the industrial revolution in textile manufacturing made colorful patterned cotton fabrics widely available. The mills of Massachusetts, and later throughout the South, played a big role in creating these fabrics.