Quilts: Their Story and How to Make ThemWebster, Marie D. (Marie Daugherty)
History
Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them
Webster, Marie D. (Marie Daugherty)
Coverlets; Quilting; Quilts
That loves to grow in fragrant, tangled masses by the
roadside was made to march in prim rows on this child's
quilt]
American women rarely think of quilts as being made or used outside of
their own country. In reality quilts are made in almost every land on
the face of the earth. Years ago, when the first New England
missionaries were sent to the Hawaiian Islands, the native women were
taught to piece quilts, which they continue to do down to this day.
These Hawaiian women treasure their handiwork greatly, and some very
old and beautiful quilts are to be found among these islands. In
creating their patchwork they have wandered from the Puritanical
designs of their teachers, and have intermingled with the conventional
figures the gorgeous flowers that bloom beside their leaf-thatched,
vine-covered huts. To these women, also, patchwork fills a place. It
affords a means of expression for individuality and originality in the
same way that it does for the lonely New England women and for the
isolated mountaineers of Kentucky.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, immortalized by "Uncle Tom's Cabin," produced
other stories, not now so familiar to us as to our countrymen of the
Civil War period, which showed an intimate knowledge of the home life
of the American people as well as the vital questions of her day. In
her novel entitled the "Minister's Wooing," which ran first as a
serial in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1859, she describes a quilting
supposed to have been given about the year 1800. Here we can view at
close range a real old-fashioned quilting, and gain some insight into
its various incidents of sociability and gossip, typical of an early
New England seafaring village, as set forth in Mrs. Stowe's inimitable
style:
"By two o'clock a goodly company began to assemble. Mrs. Deacon
Twitchel arrived, soft, pillowy, and plaintive as ever, accompanied by
Cerinthy Ann, a comely damsel, tall and trim, with a bright black eye
and a most vigorous and determined style of movement. Good Mrs. Jones,
broad, expansive, and solid, having vegetated tranquilly on in the
cabbage garden of the virtues since three years ago, when she graced
our tea party, was now as well preserved as ever, and brought some
fresh butter, a tin pail of cream, and a loaf of cake made after a new
Philadelphia receipt. The tall, spare, angular figure of Mrs. Simeon
Brown alone was wanting; but she patronized Mrs. Scudder no more, and
tossed her head with a becoming pride when her name was mentioned.
"The quilt pattern was gloriously drawn in oak leaves, done in indigo;
and soon all the company, young and old, were passing busy fingers
over it, and conversation went on briskly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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