In his review of the exhibition "Abstract Design in American Pieced Quilts," held at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, Hilton Kramer of The New York Times wrote, "The suspicion persists that the most authentic visual articulation of the American imagination in the last century is to be found in the so-called 'minor' arts,- especially in the visual crafts that had their origins in the workaday functions of regional life. ... For a century or more preceding the self-conscious invention of pictorialabstraction in European painting, the anonymous quilt-makers of the American provinces created a remarkable succession of visual masterpieces that anticipated many of the forms that were later prized for their originality and courage."

The pieced quilt is indeed an American icon, representing one of the most important and innovative design traditions this country has produced. Pieced quilts were made to be both useful and beautiful, and they afforded American women with an outlet for artistic expression when few or no others were available. Pieced quilts are also the most familiar and personal of American objects. They were and are a fixture of bedrooms in every strata of American society, and have symbolized the loving warmth of family ties since at least the mid-1800s.

Quilts are textile sandwiches, typically made up of three layers of cloth:that are joined together by stitching. The three layers of a quilt consist of a decorative top, a middle layer of insulating filler called batting and a usually plain sheet of backing material. Piecing is the most familiar and characteristic way of creating the top of a quilt. A pieced quilt top is made up of many small bits of fabric which are assembled into a pleasing design and then sewn together to create a single new composite textile.

Piecework was practiced in eighteenth century England and Holland and was probably one of the many needlework practices brought to this country by colonists. It was not widely used by quiltmakers until the mid-1800s, however, when cotton cloth became widely available and affordable in America. The majority of eighteenth and early nineteenth century quilts were eitherwhole cloth, with their top made from a single sheet of heavily quilted dyed wool, or appliqued, made by sewing large cutout pieces of printed cotton to a solid colored top sheet. The first quilt designs that included piecework were central medallions, with a central square or diamond surrounded by a series of decorative borders. The medallions of some of these early quilts were large patches of piecework, usually made up simply of squares of varied fabrics.

While American women did not invent the pieced quilt, they defined it through their development of block style organization. Block style pieced quilts, which rose to prominence between 1840 and the Civil War, are made up of a number of squares of identical size and similar or identical pattern which are arranged in rows. Each block is made up of a number of small geometric pieces arranged in a particular order to create the pattern. Quiltmakers generally worked from templates, pieces of stiff paper or metal cut into the various shapes needed to make up the quilt and used to mark the fabric before cutting. The master pattern for the blocks could also be drawn out to size or created by folding a piece of paper. Depending on the size of the master block, typical "sets" of blocks range from four by four to twelve by twelve. Block style allowed quilters to work on a quilt one block at a time; they could then assemble and quilt the joined blocks when all were completed. This method also had the great advantage of taking up less working room in the home. Individual blocks were small enough to be worked in the lap, and one or more could often be finished in a single stretch of time.

The best known of all block pieced quilt patterns is the Log Cabin, with blocks built up of thin strips of cloth laid side by side. The term Log Cabin actually encompasses a related family of pattern variations, including, in addition to the parent pattern, the equally descriptively named Windmill Blades or Pineapples, Courthouse Steps, Barn Raising, Straight Furrow and Clocks. Each of the Log Cabin variations is created by arranging light and dark colors in a different pattern; depending on the fabrics and colors chosen, the results can vary widely. Log Cabins have been in constant favor among quiltmakers for well over a hundred years with no sign of exhaustion of the pattern's possibilities in sight.

Pieced patterns were passed from neighbor to neighbor and region to region by word or mouth; women also copied each other's quilts, adding their own wrinkles to pattern concepts. As they developed, patterns took on a host of evocative names that describe the look of the block or assembled group of blocks and mirror the world of the women who invented and worked them. Many names come from the natural world, hence Wild Goose Chase, Duck's Foot in the Mud, Bear Paw, Spider Web, Pine Tree, Ocean Waves, and Peony and Prairie Flower. Others, such as Mariner's Compass, Sawtooth, Monkey Wrench, Baby's Blocks, Baskets, Fans, Dresden Plate, and Bow Tie, derive from man-made objects: Because quiltmaking is a constructive art, many quiltmakers created patterns with parallels in brick or masonry work, house framing and construction In addition to Log Cabin, other construction related pattern names include Schoolhouse, Brick Wall, Carpenter's Square and Carpenter's Wheel, Fence Rail, Roman Wall, and Stepping Stones. Such patterns as Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, World without End, Jacob's Ladder, and Crown of Thorns, and Joseph's Coat found their visual context in the pages of the bible, while patriotic and geographical themes informed such designs as Whig's Defeat, Rocky Road to Kansas, Underground Railroad, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, Burgoyne Surrounded, and Lone Star.

Contrary to popular myth, piecework was not an art of scarcity and necessity. Although block style was an economical method of piecing, the majority of pieced quilts were not made up of leftovers from the family ragbag, as legend would have it, but were instead carefully assembled from cotton fabrics purchased specifically for the project at hand. Crazy quilts, which were pieced from many irregularly shaped and sized pieces of fabric, especially put the lie to outdated theories about the origins and development of the pieced quilt. Crazies were once thought to have represented the earliest type of piecework. In reality, they were not made until after the Civil War, are the most extravagant of all quilts in their profligate use of expensive fabrics, and are almost completely non- functional. Crazies became the height of quilt fashion during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Named for their resemblance to broken, "crazed" glass, crazy quilts reflected the Victorian interest in asymmetrical design, which had been touched off by exposure to Japanese art at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Crazy quilts were usually smaller than bed-sized and, like most Log Cabins, were not quilted but rather held together with widely spaced knotted ties. They typically employed fashionable high style dress silks, satins, velvets and taffetas, and the pieces were joined or embellished with fancy embroidery stitches. Women also incorporated ribbons, lace, embroidered flowers and pictures, beads, commemorative handkerchiefs and other exotic materials into their crazies. The small decorative quilts provided a perfect complement to the busy, cluttered look of late Victorian interiors, where they were used as throws and table decorations. Since they were not often used as bedcovers, crazies were usually unlined, consisting of just a top and backing..

The most highly regarded of all American pieced quilts were made by the Amish, a Germanic Christian fundamentalist sect that settled in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. The Amish are an extremely conservative and pious people who still shun most of the means and trappings of what they call the "English," including automobiles, electricity, and advanced schooling. They came late to the pieced quilt, making their first in the 1880s and continuing to make extraordinary examples until World War II. Amish quilts were made entirely of solid colored fabric, often dyed in deeply saturated reds, purples, blues and greens. The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania favored simple patterns made of a few large pieces, such as Square within a Square, Center Diamond, Bars, Nine Patch and Sunshine and Shadow. The majority of Old Order Amish quilts are made of wool, and the large areas of solid color were covered with exquisite quilting.. Mid-Western Amish quilts, which were usually made of cotton, use patterns with many small pieces such as Ocean Waves, Tumbling Blocks, Fans, Broken Star, Log Cabin and Double Wedding Ring, often worked against a black background. Although the Amish had no use for art per se, believing in the integration of use and beauty, the powerfully simple geometry and unusual color juxtapositions of Amish quilts have prompted critics and scholars to compare them with modern abstract paintings by the likes of Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers..

Collecting Pieced Quilts
With the notable exception of Amish work, pieced quilts are considerably less expensive than appliques. Although first rate Amish examples can range well into five figures, attractive pieced quilts from other regions of the country can often be found for a few hundred dollars, and only the best and most unusual will approach the cost of Amish pieces. Log Cabins and crazies are the most commonly encountered pattern types, and can often be purchased for bargain prices at country auctions.

Look for unusual patterns or variations, and out-of-the ordinary color schemes and fabric combinations. Excellent craftsmanship is always a plus, but the overall impact of the pattern can outweigh lapses in workmanship and should be the overriding consideration of any collector. Examine the quilt up close for workmanship and condition and then stand back to judge your reaction to the overall pattern. Also look carefully at the back of the quilt; it can reveal repairs and will also usually show off the quilting more prominently than the top. Also look for signs of wear and fading and weigh them into your consideration of the quilt's price.

Try to learn as much as possible about the quilt's history. Ask who made it, what family or region it came from, when it was made, who owned it over the years. Find out if there are any family remembrances or stories attached to the piece. Any information you can gather will greatly enhance your appreciation, adding another dimension to its visual impact. A quilt's fabrics can speak volumes about its history. Pieced quilts often include a wide range of commercial fabrics whose date of manufacture can be years or even decades apart. If you are knowledgeable about fabrics, look for the most recent fabric included in the quilt and assume that its date of manufacture approximates the time of the quilt's construction.

Quilts are inherently fragile objects and need to be treated with special care. Silk is particularly problematical. Any silk quilt that shows serious signs of deterioration should be avoided; it cannot be repaired and will only get worse. Collectors who wish to use their quilts as wall hangings should ask an experienced seamstress to sew either a strip of Velcro or a rod pocket completely across the top backside of the quilt. The quilt can then be safely hung by attaching it to a complementary piece of Velcro on the wall or by running a wooden rod through the pocket. Either method will distribute the stress of hanging, which the quilt was not intended to endure, evenly. Quilts should not be exposed to direct sunlight, which will irreparably fade and deteriorate many dyes and fabrics, often with horrifying quickness. Even when displayed in the best of locations, quilts should be taken down and rested on a regular basis. This need for rotation, however, does provides the collector with an ideal excuse for owning several quilts, and the opportunity to change the look of a room often. When stored, quilts should, whenever possible, be rolled, not folded. If they must be folded, tissue paper should be stuffed between creases to reduce stress. Always use acid-free tubes, papers and boxes for storage, as newspaper, cardboard and other acidic materials can permanently stain fabric.