Museums 201: Quilts (photo diary)

by Ojibwa for Museums

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Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020 Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020 at 8:30:23am PDT

Quilting is a fabric art which involves stitching together layers of padding and fabric. Some sources suggest that the history of this art form may stretch back to about 3400 BCE. In colonial America, quilting was a way of displaying the fine needlework of the making and quilting was often the leisure time activity of wealthy women. In the United States, quilting did not become widespread until the 1840s when the industrial revolution made commercial fabrics easily available and affordable.

Shown below are some museum displays of quilting.

History Museum at Fort Missoula, Missoula, Montana

Necessity and Beauty is a display of quilts from the Museum’s permanent collection. According to the display:

“Initially overlooked as merely utilitarian women’s work and dismissed by the fine arts world as unworthy of consideration, quilting has in recent decades risen in esteem and now admired as objects of aesthetic beauty.”

photo P1060816_zpsgq8iofxt.jpg — Shown above is a crazy quilt made about 1900.

photo P1060817_zpssqib6m8y.jpg — Shown above is a tobacco fabric novelties quilt from the 1920s.

According to the display:

“In the early 1900’s, to encourage sales, American tobacco companies inserted collectable novelty items into tobacco products. The novelties included a variety of textiles, with flannel flags of nations an especially popular subject. Quilters incorporated the collectible flags into their designs, with this style presenting a variety of national flags the most popular approach.”

photo P1060821_zpsjlkw18ds.jpg — hown above is a four-patch quilt made about 1920.

photo P1060823_zpsrnqhydj6.jpg — Shown above is an undated Barn Raising Log Cabin quilt. It is called a Barn Raising variation due to its blocks divided by color diagonally to form concentric diamonds.

According to the display:

“The Log Cabin quilt design dates from Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 “Log Cabin” campaign. This style introduced a new method of quilt-making calling for individual pieces of fabric, the logs of the cabin, to be sewn to an underlying piece of fabric as well as to each other.”

photo P1060825_zpsalirukwr.jpg — Shown above is a Crib Quilt Top with a Tumbling Blocks Pattern made about 1890.

photo P1060830_zpshcoe7cns.jpg — Shown above is a Star Quilt from the Fort Peck Reservation made about 1985 by an unknown quilt maker.

photo P1060838_zps7suzhjbd.jpg — Shown above is a Crazy Quilt made in 1895 by Nancy Jane Hise.

photo P1060844_zpsymfz4vkj.jpg — Shown above is a Double Wedding Ring quilt made about 1930 by Elizabeth Connacher. This was a popular pattern in the 1930s and was used to showcase quilt making skills.

Wenatchee Valley Museum, Wenatchee, Washington

photo P1160731_zpstwegzen5.jpg — Shown above is Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt made about 1920-1935.

According to the display:

“The solid and print fabrics used are very typical of circa 1920-1930. Self-made applied bias binding is hand stitched to front, folded to back and hand stitched. Pieces of hexagons are hand pieced flowers, have a yellow center.”