A Patchwork of Misinformation

I’ve been loath to take the plunge into a topic about which I am really a neophyte and try to tell others something about it, but I also want to learn more myself, and I like to share what I learn in my research. I have experienced a couple of unrelated things having to do with quilting over the past month or two and I feel like I’m starting down the rabbit hole into a domestic history wonderland: American quilting.

I have always admired quilts. I have friends and family members who quilt(ed) and I have been gifted several lovely quilted items, including two quilts. For years, I hung these quilts on a rack in a bedroom where they were safe from my cats but nobody ever saw them or used them. Recently, I decided it was silly to keep them hidden away and both have come into near daily use during these cold winter months. There are few things that give warmth and comfort like a handmade quilt, not to mention the aesthetic appeal. I have taken first steps in quilting once before and given up. I had determined to start again and, last fall, decided to make it a 2017 resolution. Shortly after I had resolved to give it a serious try in January, the local newspaper that I write for asked me to cover speakers in a local lecture series, and one of the lecturers was Mary Fons, a writer and quilter whose talk for the series was about quilting and her own journey growing up as the daughter of a famous quilter—Marianne Fons—who made her name during the 1970’s quilting Renaissance buoyed by the bicentennial. Hearing about the history of quilting from Mary Fons during our phone interview and then, in more detail (and with visual aids) during her talk, I got even more inspired to quilt.

I am sticking to my resolution so far. I have a toddler, so hobbies move along at a snail’s pace for me, but they are a lifesaver. So far, I have spent time reading, acquired some materials, gotten some sewing machine help from my mom, and cut plain squares for a simple nine-patch pillow. This newfound interest creates a connection to a strong American tradition of which women have always been the primary practitioners, and which couples art and beauty with domestic efficiency. My kind of topic. Naturally, I wanted to learn more about the history of quilting, and there is so much material there. It cannot be covered in a single blog entry, but I can share what I’ve learned so far.

First of all, a quilt, by definition, is three layers: The top, the back, and the center “filling,” which is called batting. Today, batting is manufactured specifically for the purpose and is made of cotton, polyester, or wool. Modern batting has a consistent thickness that only automated textile manufacturing can produce. Early quilters had to be a bit more creative. The first quilts in America had batting made of carded wool or cotton (more on carding later). Because the carding process is fairly labor-intensive and the resulting material is inconsistent, past quilters had to work harder to achieve the desired thickness. Thrifty quilters sometimes used worn-out wool blankets or old quilts as batting for new ones to save themselves some effort. After the cotton gin was invented in 1793, batting material became gradually more consistent and available as the technology improved. The automatic carding machine followed in 1801, further automating the process. Quilt historians often use the batting material as a way to ascertain the age of very old quilts.

For most of us, the word quilt conjures an image of a colorful patchwork design most commonly associated with American quilting traditions.

These beauties are created using many small scraps of fabric sewn together in a process called piecing, first creating squares made of cut up fabric shapes, and then assembling and sewing the squares together to make the quilt top. The back is often one or more larger pieces of fabric. The top, batting, and back are then quilted. The official process of quilting consists of sewing in a pattern through all three layers, which creates a texture throughout. If it’s a patchwork quilt, the texture often compliments the pattern of the pieced top. The quilting process can be a solo endeavor, or it can be done by multiple people working together, which is one reason why quilting has become both an artistic and a social tradition in American culture.

When you think of a patchwork quilt, you might picture a poor woman in the 18^th century cutting up rags of hand-me-down children’s clothing by candlelight, frugally hoarding every reusable scrap until she finally had enough to create a colorful masterpiece. This is a common misconception, as I learned when I talked to Mary Fons. I hadn’t really put much thought into it up until then, but the truth is that the patchwork quilts grew from the abundance of printed fabric made possible by the industrial revolution. The patchwork tradition was born in the 1820s and quickly took hold, eventually becoming the quintessentially American way of making quilts.

Once I was enlightened, it didn’t take long for me to see that Mary wasn’t joking about how common this mistake really is. One of the first books I checked out on quilting was the very basic “Quilting for Dummies.” I was unimpressed. I found a few typos as I read the introduction and I tossed the book aside entirely when I read the “History of Quilting” and was treated to a description much like the one I detailed above.

Because I’m researching colonial history at the moment, I started watching an AMC series called Turn: Washington’s Spies to keep my mind in the period. There are several quilts shown in the program (set, as you probably surmised, in the 1770s), all of which are patchwork quilts. I cringed at the anachronism but stuck with the series, which is really great and I recommend it. But it further proved Mary’s assertion. Quilts show up as carefully curated artifacts in many television shows and movies set in the past, but it seems that even the historical consultants the more diligent crews surely engage are ignorant about the true history of quilting.

In colonial America, printed fabric was a rare commodity. Prints like those that are abundant and cheap today had to be imported from India by way of England. These prints were used sparingly and quilting, which was a slow hand-sewing process, was mostly seen on petticoats, rarely something as large as a bedspread.

Quilted Petticoat

The quilts that did adorn the beds of wealthy merchants and dignitaries in the Americas were what we now call “wholecloth quilts.” A large, solid-colored piece of cloth served as the quilt top and the pattern was entirely found in the texture. Because of this, the stitch patterns were incredibly intricate and when you imagine someone doing such fine stitching by hand a century and a half before electricity entered the average American home, it is no surprise that quilted bed coverings only existed in households with domestic help or slaves to help with the laborious production process.

The textile trade in the colonies was, of course, one of many commercial dissatisfactions that played a part in the revolution but I don’t want to discuss it at length because that’s been done, and it isn’t my focus here. I will, however, draw attention to a few interesting points. The origin of the term “calico,” a descriptor for fabric with a small repeated design is the Indian port city of Calicut (and Anglicization of the region’s actual name Kozhikode), a major trading hub. The English were so enamored of the Indian printed fabrics that they learned to reproduce them domestically. Before the power loom mechanized production in England in 1785, there were commercial operations for the production of handwoven fabrics. The American colonies provided raw materials such as cotton and indigo, and, in return, were treated to the opportunity to import the finished goods from the mother country at a high price.

Just prior to the revolution, the American colonies were England’s main export market for woven and printed fabrics. England maintained a stranglehold on this process until the revolution and even afterward. They wanted to keep their lucrative monopoly as long as possible. Trade secrets eventually leaked out, even as Americans were rapidly catching up through their own innovations, and the power loom was introduced to the United States in 1814. It only took about five years from that point for the mass manufacture of printed fabrics in the U.S. to begin, leading to the dawn of the patchwork quilting era.

We’ve discussed the fabric and the filler, but there is one other material needed for quilting, which may end up as an afterthought: the thread. Today, a spool of perfectly consistent machined thread in any color of the rainbow can be purchased with the loose change you find in the cup holder of your car. In colonial times, even manufactured thread was a scarce and expensive commodity. American seamstresses could produce their own thread stateside by spinning wool or cotton. Most everyone knows what a spinning wheel looks like and what it does, thanks to Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin, but fewer and fewer people know how to operate one in the post-Jo-Ann-fabrics era. I am one of the lucky few who own and operate a spinning wheel, and have come to learn a little more about the process since taking up the practice.

As a knitter, I use mine to spin yarn and I’m new to it and not very good, but it’s fun and practice makes perfect. Even after nearly a year of spinning, my skeins of relatively heavy yarn are far from consistent in their thickness. The skill required to spin thread fine enough to sew with would take years to develop, even with a modern wheel. And although the spinning wheel is a manually operated device derived nearly a millennium ago, I’m sure the technology has improved over time. Spinning the fiber into thread takes great skill, but it’s the final step in a long process that starts with a sheep or a plant. Once the fiber is procured through picking or shearing, it must be carded. The carding process involves combing the fiber soften it and remove foreign objects such as stems, bits of straw, or sheep dung. This is done by machines today, and even home spinners often use drum carders to speed the process. In the pre-industrial age, carding was done by hand using two hard-bristled combs called carders.

Hand Carding (c) Paisley Museum and Art Galleries, Renfrewshire Council Collections, Including Collections Associated with the Paisley Art Institute; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

The carded fiber is gathered into a pile or ball known as a batt. The batt could be used for the middle layer of the quilt, or spun into yarn for knitting or crocheting, or thread for sewing. Today’s spinners are hobbyists—it is much easier to buy perfect yarn online or in a craft store. I doubt anyone but a handful of zealous historical reenactors spin thread for sewing, but in the days when thread was a rarity, making it at home would have been more feasible. English quilters, for whom thread was readily available, favored the tight backstitch, in which every stitch touches the previous stitch. In America, the running stitch became a favorite. The stitch holds the fabric just fine, but a gap exists between each stitch. In this way, colonial women used about 1/3 as much (handspun) thread as their backstitching English counterparts. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and the running stitch is the de facto quilting stitch even today when thread is abundant, because it’s been established that one stitch can do the work of three.

Like most things in 18^th century life, sewing was a long and laborious—not to mention expensive—process that we take for granted today with our sewing machines and our readily available thread and fabric. So, the next time you curl up under your quilt, maybe it was purchased at a store, or handmade by a modern friend with an electric sewing machine, remember the origins of this tradition and appreciate how far it has come.

Sources and Further Reading

Kiracofe, Roderick. The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750-1950. New York, NY, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1993

http://www.all-about-quilts.com/quilt-batting-history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozhikode