Quilts of the Old West

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Quilts of the Old West

Quilting Women’s Lives. While books, paintings, and almanacs often portrayed the West as a realm of masculine adventure, a contest between men and nature or between white men and Indians, women, of course, played vital roles in the migration to and settling of the West. The demands of frontier life, however, as well as cultural norms, limited opportunities for artistic expression by women; but recently scholars have discovered that the important contributions of women in the West did not go undocumented. Aside from diaries and journals, Western women also recorded their daily lives in their quilts. Quilts were the most popular form of needlework produced in the nineteenth century; on the westward trail or the frontier settlements, quilts were a means of both physical and emotional comfort. Thick quilts lined and covered wagons, padded fragile china, or became window covers or primitive shelters such as tents. Quilts were even used in the place of coffins. One 1849 diary records the bodies of a mother and infant “wrapped together in a bed comforter and wound … with a few yards of string that we made by tying together torn strips of a cotton dress shirt.”

Patterns and Themes. Quilts made by pioneer women often reflected the flora and fauna encountered in the West. Hawks, honeysuckle, peonies, and stars appear on a number of quilts of the period. Migration was also a prominent theme. The pattern of Sarah Koontz Glover’s “Pinwheel” quilt, made while crossing the Oregon Trail in 1849, suggests both movement and wind. Wheel patterns were popular, as well as patterns that have come to be known as “wandering foot” and “log cabin.” Other quilts or pieces of quilts commemorated births, arrivals, weddings, or accomplishments. Despite their celebratory themes, the process of making quilts was not easy. Quilting demanded long hours and painstaking skill, often in extremely difficult conditions. In the early 1820s, for example, Mary Rabb, an early settler of Texas, described the arduous labor of life on the frontier, even with the advantage of a spinning wheel: “The mosquitoes and sand gnats was so bad that it was impossible to get any sleep … I would pick the cotton with my fingers and spin six hundred thread around the wheel every day and milk my cows and pound my meal in a mortar and churn and mind my children.”

Bees and Friendship. In the often harsh and isolated conditions on the frontier, quilts also became a means of building community. Prior to departing for the West, quilting bees were held, bringing together female friends to work cooperatively. These bees became farewell ceremonies, or as Miriam Davis Colt put it in 1856 as she left New York for Kansas, they “unit[ed] pleasure with business.” “Friendship quilts,” inscribed with the names and best wishes of old friends, were also popular, treasured remembrances of the life left behind. The quilts themselves could become records of the journey West. Blocks of one existing quilt, made by members of the Hezlep and Shuey families as they journeyed from Illinois to California in 1858–1859, record: “Piec[e]s cut in the winter of 1858,” “Left Illinois for California—April 15th, 1859,” “Crossed the Plains,” “Seven months on the road,” and “Ho for California!” Once a group of settlers arrived, quilts often became the means of joining the community. In 1853 Rebecca H. N. Woodson, just turned eighteen and newly arrived in Sonoma City, California, derived “great comfort” from the company of her neighbors. “There was scarcely ever a day we was not to-geather [sic ]. We did not think we could start to make a dress or start piecing a new quilt without consulting each other.” A Swedish woman who came to Kansas in the early 1850s recalled an invitation to a sewing circle as a signal of friendship and acceptance. She returned the favor by inviting her neighbors to an all-day quilting at her home. In conditions that were often harsh and performing labor that was often draining, women found both relief and a means of expression in quilting. As one female settler recalled, writing of life in Texas in the 1830s, “quiltin’ bees” were occasions for the attending women to help “each other in every way … they helped each other. Perhaps this thought justifies the whole of pioneer woman’s suffering.”