Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (11 page)

Shortly after the Revolution came the great migration from Virginia over the ridges of the Blue and the Appalachian chains into what was then the wilderness of Tennessee and Kentucky. The descendants of these hardy pioneers who first forced their way westward still live among the
Kentucky and Virginia hills under the conditions which prevailed a hundred years ago. In this heavily timbered rough country they manage to eke out a precarious existence by cultivating small hillside patches of cotton, corn, and a few vegetables. Immured in the seclusion of the mountains they have remained untouched by the world’s progress during the past century. Year after year they are satisfied to live this secluded existence, and but rarely make an acquaintance with a stranger. Educational advantages, except of the most elementary sort, are almost unknown, and the majority of these mountaineers neither read nor write. As a result of this condition of isolated and primitive living, existing in the mountains of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, the household crafts that flourished in this country before the advent of machinery are still carried on exactly as in the old days.

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OHIO ROSE

This “Rose” quilt was made in Ohio about 80 years ago. Colours: red, pink, and two shades of green

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ROSE OF SHARON

Made in Indiana about 65 years ago. It has a wool interlining instead of the usual cotton

The simple needs of the family are almost entirely supplied by the women of the household. They spin, weave, and make the few plain garments which they and their families wear. Day after day, year in and year out, these isolated women must fill in the hours with little tasks connected with
home life. As in many other instances where women are dependent upon their own resources for amusement, they have recourse to their needles. Consequently, it is in the making of quilts, coverlets, and allied forms of needlework that these mountain women spend their hours of recreation.

The quilts, both pieced and patched, that are made in mountaineers’ cabins have a great variety of designs. Many designs have been used again and again by each succeeding generation of quilters without any variation whatever, and have well-known names. There are also designs that have been originated by a proficient quilt maker, who has made use of some common flower as the basis for her conventional design. It has not been a great many years since the materials used in making the mountain quilts were dyed as well as woven in the home. The dyes were homemade from common roots and shrubs gathered from nearby woods and meadows. Blue was obtained from wild indigo; brown from walnut hulls; black from the bark of scrub-oak; and yellow from laurel leaves. However, the materials which must be purchased for a quilt are so meagre, and the colours called “oil boiled”—now used to dye calico—are so fast, that the mountain
women seldom dye their own fabrics any more. They bring in a few chickens or eggs to the nearest village, and in exchange obtain a few yards of precious coloured calico for their quilts.

Miss Bessie Daingerfield, a Kentuckian, who is in close touch with these mountaineers, tells us what a void the quilt fills in the lives of the lonely women of the hills: “While contemporary women out in the world are waging feminist war, those in the mountains of the long Appalachian chain still sit at their quilting frames and create beauty and work wonders with patient needles. There is much beautiful and skilful handiwork hidden away in these hills. The old women still weave coverlets, towels, and table linen from wool from their own sheep and from flax grown in their own gardens. The girls adorn their cotton gowns with ‘compass work,’ exact, exquisite. In some places the men and boys, girls and women, make baskets of hickory reeds and willows to delight the heart of the collector. But from the cradle to the grave, the women make quilts. The tiny girl shows you with pride the completed four patch or nine patch, square piled on square, which ‘mammy aims to set up for her ag’inst spring.’ The mother tells you
half jesting, half in earnest, ‘the young un will have several ag’inst she has a home of her own.’ No bride of the old country has more pride in her dower chest than the mountain bride in her pile of quilts. The old woman will show you a stack of quilts from floor to ceiling of her cabin. One dear old soul told me she had eighty-four, all different, and ‘ever’ stitch, piecin’, settin’ up, quiltin’, my own work and ne’er another finger tetched hit.’”

Patchwork was an important factor in making plain the knotty problems of existence, as Eliza Calvert Hall clearly shows when she makes “Aunt Jane of Kentucky” say: “How much piecin’ a quilt is like livin’ a life! Many a time I’ve set and listened to Parson Page preachin’ about predestination and free will, and I’ve said to myself, ‘If I could jest git up in the pulpit with one of my quilts I could make it a heap plainer to folks than parson’s makin’ it with his big words.’ You see, you start out with jest so much caliker; you don’t go to the store and pick it out and buy it, but the neighbours will give you a piece here and a piece there, and you’ll have a piece left over every time you cut a dress, and you take jest what happens to come. And that’s like predestination. But when
it comes to the cuttin’ out, why, you’re free to choose your own pattern. You can give the same kind o’ pieces to two persons, and one’ll make a ‘nine patch’ and one’ll make a ‘wild-goose chase,’ and there’ll be two quilts made out of the same kind of pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that is jest the way with livin’. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut them out and put ’em together pretty much to suit ourselves, and there’s a heap more in the cuttin’ out and the sewin’ than there is in the caliker.”

In the great Central West, from Ohio to the Mississippi, the early settlers passed through the same cycle of development as did their ancestors in the beginnings of the original colonies along the seaboard. The same dangers and privations were faced, and the women, as well as the men, quickly adapted themselves to the hardships of life in a new country. Shortly after the War of 1812, which secured to the United States a clear title to this vast region, the great migration into the Ohio Valley began. Some families came by way of the Great Lakes, some by wagon over the Pennsylvania ridges, and still others by horseback over the mountains from Virginia. One and all of these
pioneer families brought with them their most cherished household possessions. It is hardly necessary to say that every family had one or more quilts among its household goods. Many cases are on record of rare old mahogany bureaus and bedsteads transported hundreds of miles over trails through the wilderness on pack horses. Upon arrival at the site chosen for the future home, the real work of house building and furnishing began.

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ORIGINAL FLORAL DESIGNS

This quilt contains twenty blocks, each of a different design. The border is composed of festoons decorated with cockscomb and sprays of flowers. A southern Indiana quilt made about 1825

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CONVENTIONAL TULIP

Made from a pattern used 130 years ago. Colours: pink and green

“Only he who knows what it means to hew a home out of the forest; of what is involved in the task of replacing mighty trees with corn; only he who has watched the log house rising in the clearing, and has witnessed the devotedness that gathers around the old log schoolhouse and the pathos of a grave in the wilderness, can understand how sobriety, decency, age, devoutness, beauty, and power belong to the story of those who began the mighty task of changing the wild west into the heart of a teeming continent.” Thus Jenkin Lloyd Jones, in his address on “The Father of Lincoln,” gives a graphic picture of the labours and trials confronting those who made the first settlements in what are now the flourishing states of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and Michigan.

As in the colonies of New England, so here, the comforts of the family depended upon the thrift, energy, and thoughtfulness of the women. Practically every article of clothing worn by the entire family, as well as all household supplies, were the work of their busy hands. All day in the frontier cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, the clack of the loom, or the click of knitting needles. In many localities the added work of teaching the children fell to the mothers, and the home lessons given around the fireplace, heaped with glowing logs, were the only ones possible for many boys and girls. It is of particular interest to note how often learning and housekeeping went hand in hand in the first homes of this new country. The few lines following are extracts from the diary of a busy Indiana housewife of the period preceding the Mexican War, and show how fully occupied was the time of the pioneer woman:

“November 10th. To-day was cider-making day, and all were up at sunrise.”

“December 1st. We killed a beef to-day, the neighbours helping.”

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