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Quilting History

© Jeanne Marsh

Is quilting, the art of stitching through padding between two layers of cloth, an innovation of the 19th century in America? Far from it! How about 3400 B.C. in Egypt? One of the earliest examples of quilting may be a "carved ivory figure of a Pharaoh of the Egyptian First Dynasty, wearing a supposedly quilted mantle, c. 3400 B.C." (Quilting by Averil Colby, 1978 London, Batsford)

Probably early forms of quilting were the layers of clothing needed to keep warm. Quilted bedding was probably created for the same reason. In pre-colonial days in Europe, soldiers put away their heavy armor and wore padded clothing instead for protection. Other nations of the world wore quilted clothing for warmth.

"The colonists of the 1600s brought with them to America the skills and styles of their European homelands." (American Heritage Quilts Better Homes and Gardens Publishers 1991). Whole cloth coverlets and even garments were quilted with the hearts, feathers, and wreaths that we know today. At left is a current copy of those whole cloth coverlets. (Stencil quilts by Spartex)

In the 1700s, wealthy ladies embroidered "throws" made of irregular pieces of silk, linen, and wool, now called Crazy Quilts. A style, broderie perse, consisted of cutouts of imported chintz appliqued to whole cloth, usually with a center design surrounded by formal placement of small designs cut from the same chintz.

Quilts were highly valued. Estate inventories and wills of the 1700s and early 1800s show that bedding and quilts were handed down to the next generation. American Heritage Quilts tells that George Washington's mother left him a blue and white quilt.

By the mid 1800s, with the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the cotton gin, when cotton fabric began to be manufactured in the US, patchwork patterns came into vogue. More affluent quilters could buy fabric to cut into geometric pieces to sew into blocks. The first designs were simple: squares, rectangles, and triangles. Then, more fanciful designs were developed. Mariners Star (current adaptation, at left) as a center medallion became a favorite of more accomplished quiltmakers. The invention of the locked stitch sewing machine made it possible to speedily put together one of these quilt tops.

During the Depression years of the 1930s, companies that sold products in cotton bags such as flour, sugar, and chick feed, made these bags of printed fabrics. As a promotional gimmick, this had a very practical value. Women looked for the prettiest fabric, and made clothing from the feed sacks, using the left over scraps for quilts. Last winter, I was sent two of these Depression Era quilt tops to quilt for the lucky owner. She had found the quilt tops while getting ready for an estate sale. They had been carefully stored away all these years.

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