Quilts and Community

Robert Shaw 

Quilts are essentially communal objects. They are about sharing, and their meanings bind family, friends, and neighbors together. Quilts have been an important part of the lives of American women since the early decades of the nineteenth century. Our foremothers made quilts for themselves and their families; they also often gathered together in their homes, granges, and churches to create quilts for special social and community occasions and causes. They made quilts for many reasons—certainly as warming comforters for the beds of loved ones, but also as a means of expressing their thoughts and feelings, as gifts for friends and community members, as a way to commemorate important events such as births and weddings, and as fund raising pieces to support political and religious causes and local projects.

Quilts are comforting and often beautiful, but they are also important and fascinating for the deep personal and community meanings and historical information they contain. Indeed, because they reflect so many otherwise unrecorded aspects of women's' lives, quilts are often now studied as historical documents. The fabrics a quiltmaker used can tell us approximately when a quilt was made and often reveal her social and economic standing. Similarly, her choice of pattern and the quilted designs she used to join and decorate the layers of her quilt can also offer information about her life, her family, her community, and her times. Dates, signatures, and inscriptions, while rare, can offer even more intimate details, placing a quilt in time, giving it a personal context, perhaps even identifying a child or loved one for whom it was made. Even more important is the collective, cumulative information that quilts can offer when studied together, information that can paint a picture of a family, a community, a region, or even a culture.

Nevada was not settled until the 1850s, decades after quilts became the most common bedcover in America, and did not became a state until 1864. Early settlers undoubtedly brought quilts with them on their overland journeys to the state. They also brought the knowledge of how to make quilts with them, as well as a repertory of patterns and designs popular in the more established regions from which t,hey traveled west.

Undoubtedly many of the quilts that came west with Nevada's first settlers were cherished as links to their old communities and to family and friends left behind. Friendship quilts were a popular way of allowing departing neighbors to carry a memento of their old community with them. When they learned that a friend was moving away, women often made and signed individual quilt blocks, which they then assembled into a Friendship quilt. In some Friendship quilts , like the c. 1870 star top made in Carson City and owned by the Nevada Historical Society, the blocks were all the same pattern. In others, the blocks were all different and probably served a dual purpose as samples of designs the recipient could take with her for reference in her new, often remote, home.

Crazy quilts, so-called for their resemblance to the broken, asymmetrical patterns of crazed pottery and glass, were extremely popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike most other quilts of their time, crazies were made strictly for decoration, not warmth; they were never lined and most were smaller than bed-sized. In addition, most crazies incorporated fragile fabrics such as silks and velvets that were unsuitable for functional bedcovers. Makers of crazy quilts tried to use as many different fabrics and embroidery stitches as they could, incorporating pieces of fancy dress material, political ribbons, beads, and even the silk bands in which bundles of cigars were wrapped. Tobacco companies also made silk advertising premiums specifically for use by quilters. Crazies were not used in bedrooms, but rather put out on chairs or sofas in the public rooms of the house, where their rich colors and elaborate stitchery could be enjoyed by family and visitors alike.

Quilts have been made to support causes at least since the Civil War. Union women made thousands of quilts to donate to the army during the war. Temperance and women's suffrage,the two great causes of the burgeoning women's rights movement of the late nineteenth century, elicited hundreds of quilts. During World War I, women supported America's humanitarian efforts by making Red Cross fund raising quilts. An unusual Red Cross quilt made in 1917 by the president of the organization's Reno chapter is is owned by the Nevada Historical Society. Like most Red Cross quilts, its simple design is made up of rows of red crosses on a solid white background. What makes this quilt special was added in the years after it was made. The quilt's crosses are surrounded by signatures-of politicians, including Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, French premier Clemenceau, socialist Eugene Debs, and even the not-yet-infamous Benito Mussolini; movie stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks; authors Arthur Conan Doyle and Booth Tarkington; legendary baseball pitcher Christy Mathewson; and many Nevada notables.

Quiltmaking almost died out after World War II, as advancing technology, a flood of inexpensive manufactured goods, and increasing public disdain for traditional hand crafts combined. Interest began to resurge during the 1960s, as a new generation looked back to simpler times and ways of life in their quest for meaning. With the Bicentennial and the women's movement of the 1970s, the rebirth of quiltmaking was complete, and interest has continued to grow ever since. A recent independent survey discovered that nearly twenty million Americans are now making quilts! Seemingly every town of any size now has a quilt shop, where women and men often gather to share their work and take classes, and a network of quilt guilds stretches across the country as well.

In recent years, quilters have made quilts about every imaginable cause and issue-including breast cancer, gay rights, child abuse, animal rights, global warming, conservation, and racism. Two blackly humorous quilts even imagined various ways that Sunbonnet Sue, the little girl who has appeared in thousands of 20th century children's quilts, might meet her demise. At the other end of the spectrum, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt begun in the late 1980s has had a particularly powerful impact. The mission of the NAMES Project Foundation is to use the AIDS Memorial Quilt to help bring an end to the AIDS epidemic through public education and awareness. Made up of tens of thousands of blocks made by family and friends of those who have died from the virus, the quilt sadly includes many blocks made in memory of Nevada citizens, and parts of it have been shown in various locations around the state.

Not surprisingly, the 9/11 terrorist attacks have also elicited an outpouring of public grief and caring through quilts. Many quilts have been given to New York fire departments and police or auctioned to raise funds, and a spontaneous exhibit was organized over the internet in late September. Called "America: From the Heart," the moving exhibit brought together 242 quilts made in response 9/11 and was shown at International Quilt Festival in Houston in early November 2001. Many of the quilts were donated by their makers with all sale proceeds given to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Foundation.

As these exhibits demonstrate, quilts are and have been a vital part of the story of this country in general and of Nevada in particular. Each brings a piece of the state, its history, and its people to life, and each serves to connect the viewer to a continuum of community that stretches backward and forward in time. Quilts have connected people and helped to bind communities together throughout American history. Their messages and meanings continue to resonate.