Quilting, or quilt making, is the art of sewing layers of fabric together to create warm bed covers. Typically, soft padding is placed between two fabric layers and sewn in place with stitched designs.
Quilting dates back 5,000 years to ancient Egypt, but one of the oldest surviving quilts was made around 1360. The Tristan Quilt, sewn in Sicily, depicts scenes from the story of “Tristan and Isolde,” a famous medieval romance. One section of the quilt is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and another section is in the Palazzo del Bargello in Florence.
One of the most famous quilts in the world is the linen and cotton Dear Jane quilt made by Jane Stickle (1817-1896) in 1863, now housed in the Bennington Museum in Vermont. It consists of 169 5-inch squares or blocks, each with different patterns, containing a total of 5,602 pieces of cloth. Jane embroidered the words “in War Time 1863” into the quilt.
The most expensive quilt in the world is the Reconciliation Quilt, a Civil War-era quilt that sold at auction in 1991 at Sotheby’s for $264,000. It was made by Lucinda Ward Honstain (1820–1904) and has 40 blocks depicting scenes of domestic life in the 1860s. It is now at the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska.
The 1991 novel “How to Make an American Quilt” by Whitney Otto and subsequent 1995 film starring Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn, Maya Angelou and Anne Bancroft tells the story of a young bride-to-be who listens to family stories told by her elders as they make a quilt. The beautiful film can be viewed on several on-line services.
Lynn Tinley, a PhD from Emory University in American studies with an emphasis on textiles, reports that pieced quilts, made of small pieces of cloth sewn together, became very popular beginning in the 19th century. Before the general availability…
Read the full article here
