Excerpted from A Book Of Blandford Facts compiled by Plumb Brown
By Susan Tiffany
Do you remember your first bed-quilt block sewed in over and over stitch, under the direction of your Grandmother and that your stitches were inspected at intervals to see whether they "passed muster"? Did your childish fingers realize that to sew blocks beautifully was an art going back (in America at least) to the middle of the eighteenth century? A simple square block a day seemed like quite a stint, I'm sure, but finally, with practice, there came to be satisfaction in the evenly set stitches.
The calico was brown perhaps, printed with a distinct and enduring design, for both color and pattern of an earlier day had such qualities. There may have been in your family, as in mine, a Great Aunt whose fine sewing was traditional. In many families love of color, design, and skill walked hand-in-hand with thrift.
The first quilts were, with economy, fashioned of odds and ends of women's and children's clothing. The size of the scrap determined or limited the choice of pattern but made for originality and ingenuity. The labor, the neat piecing and elaborate quilting, thousands of stitches in a small space all give a present day student the feeling that love of the task, not time, was the objective.
Women took up piecing as an all engaging pastime, they exchanged patterns and materials, discussed design and admired pretty material with great zest. A quilting party at Naragansett in 1752 is told of as having lasted for ten days!
Materials of Great Grandmother's day were cotton, linens, India chintz, and French calico, of excellent quality, as fresh and bright a century later as when first used. Many quaint names are given to patterns: Rising Sun, Job's Trouble, Log Cabin, Rose of Sharon, Tree of Life, Horn of Plenty, Single Double and Triple Chain, and Wedding Ring. Some pertained to history: Rocky Road to California, Prairie Rose, Whig Rose. Others are not easily accounted for.
It took then, and it takes today, a worker of some ability to plan and cut the blocks. The design is cut from plain firm cardboard, the cloth marked out and evenly cut. The seams, when sewed, have to be taken in enough to hold well, yet not too much; if a variety of colors are used, the top must be arranged to the best advantage. When ready to quilt the mechanical process is as follows: lay the completed top flatly on a lining with layers of wool or cotton wadding between and the edges basted all around.
Alice Morse Earle thus describes the quilting frame: "Four bars of wood, about ten feet long, were placed at the edges, the quilt sewed to them with stout thread, the bars crossed and tied firmly at the corners, and the whole raised on chairs or tables to a convenient height. Around the outstretched quilt a dozen workers could sit running the whole together with fanciful or set designs of stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was rolled upon its bar and the work went on in a united and truly sociable way that required no special attention, in which all were facing together and all drawing closer together as the afternoon passed."
Quilting designs were sometimes outlined for working by holding up a chalked string and snapping it down on the quilt, leaving a faint line to guide the eye and needle.
Elaborate quilts of silk are treasured heirlooms, the blocks set together with fine or fancy stitches, the lining quite likely to be breadths from the ample skirt of a wedding gown.
Confortables or tied quilts were often heavy and sustained their name well for use in a real country winter. Pictures on the linings brought strange fancies to small sleepers beneath them and gentle smiles of memory to older eyes. There are beautiful old appliqued quilt tops, and there is, in the Connecticut Valley Historical Collection, a white coverlet with padded quilting to show a raised pattern of design in the finest of stitches.
In most American homes quilting suffered an eclipse from 1895 to perhaps ten years ago (1927), though it has never ceased in our Southern mountains. Now it has become popular again and there are fine examples of modern workmanship, either copies of the old patterns or taking
up new subjects, for instance, an airship propeller as the motif. The point of economy is not so strictly adhered to in the new work where often only two colors are used.
The Eastern States Exposition at Springfield has had at least two fascinating, educational exhibits of quilts of every description. While it is possible to send quilt tops south for fine stitchery and completion to Tennessee or Kentucky mountain women, there are those in North Blandford who have been faithful to the skillful needle craft of their grandmothers.
The North Blandford Kings Daughters circle has been quilting for about forty years to earn money for the church, relining old quilts, completing new, and tying comfortables in masterly fashion. Eight members meet regularly each week in summer to ply their needles and enjoy the fellowship.
Among old fashioned, now revived, arts, quilting must be given an honored place as a medium of sociability and a representative craft.
Do you remember your first bed-quilt block sewed in over and over stitch, under the direction of your Grandmother and that your stitches were inspected at intervals to see whether they "passed muster"? Did your childish fingers realize that to sew blocks beautifully was an art going back (in America at least) to the middle of the eighteenth century? A simple square block a day seemed like quite a stint, I'm sure, but finally, with practice, there came to be satisfaction in the evenly set stitches.
The calico was brown perhaps, printed with a distinct and enduring design, for both color and pattern of an earlier day had such qualities. There may have been in your family, as in mine, a Great Aunt whose fine sewing was traditional. In many families love of color, design, and skill walked hand-in-hand with thrift.
The first quilts were, with economy, fashioned of odds and ends of women's and children's clothing. The size of the scrap determined or limited the choice of pattern but made for originality and ingenuity. The labor, the neat piecing and elaborate quilting, thousands of stitches in a small space all give a present day student the feeling that love of the task, not time, was the objective.
Women took up piecing as an all engaging pastime, they exchanged patterns and materials, discussed design and admired pretty material with great zest. A quilting party at Naragansett in 1752 is told of as having lasted for ten days!
Materials of Great Grandmother's day were cotton, linens, India chintz, and French calico, of excellent quality, as fresh and bright a century later as when first used. Many quaint names are given to patterns: Rising Sun, Job's Trouble, Log Cabin, Rose of Sharon, Tree of Life, Horn of Plenty, Single Double and Triple Chain, and Wedding Ring. Some pertained to history: Rocky Road to California, Prairie Rose, Whig Rose. Others are not easily accounted for.
It took then, and it takes today, a worker of some ability to plan and cut the blocks. The design is cut from plain firm cardboard, the cloth marked out and evenly cut. The seams, when sewed, have to be taken in enough to hold well, yet not too much; if a variety of colors are used, the top must be arranged to the best advantage. When ready to quilt the mechanical process is as follows: lay the completed top flatly on a lining with layers of wool or cotton wadding between and the edges basted all around.
Alice Morse Earle thus describes the quilting frame: "Four bars of wood, about ten feet long, were placed at the edges, the quilt sewed to them with stout thread, the bars crossed and tied firmly at the corners, and the whole raised on chairs or tables to a convenient height. Around the outstretched quilt a dozen workers could sit running the whole together with fanciful or set designs of stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was rolled upon its bar and the work went on in a united and truly sociable way that required no special attention, in which all were facing together and all drawing closer together as the afternoon passed."
Quilting designs were sometimes outlined for working by holding up a chalked string and snapping it down on the quilt, leaving a faint line to guide the eye and needle.
Elaborate quilts of silk are treasured heirlooms, the blocks set together with fine or fancy stitches, the lining quite likely to be breadths from the ample skirt of a wedding gown.
Confortables or tied quilts were often heavy and sustained their name well for use in a real country winter. Pictures on the linings brought strange fancies to small sleepers beneath them and gentle smiles of memory to older eyes. There are beautiful old appliqued quilt tops, and there is, in the Connecticut Valley Historical Collection, a white coverlet with padded quilting to show a raised pattern of design in the finest of stitches.
In most American homes quilting suffered an eclipse from 1895 to perhaps ten years ago (1927), though it has never ceased in our Southern mountains. Now it has become popular again and there are fine examples of modern workmanship, either copies of the old patterns or taking
up new subjects, for instance, an airship propeller as the motif. The point of economy is not so strictly adhered to in the new work where often only two colors are used.
The Eastern States Exposition at Springfield has had at least two fascinating, educational exhibits of quilts of every description. While it is possible to send quilt tops south for fine stitchery and completion to Tennessee or Kentucky mountain women, there are those in North Blandford who have been faithful to the skillful needle craft of their grandmothers.
The North Blandford Kings Daughters circle has been quilting for about forty years to earn money for the church, relining old quilts, completing new, and tying comfortables in masterly fashion. Eight members meet regularly each week in summer to ply their needles and enjoy the fellowship.
Among old fashioned, now revived, arts, quilting must be given an honored place as a medium of sociability and a representative craft.