It's All in the Pattern
by Bob Brooke

Quilts played a major role in the trek west made by the pioneers. Women prepared for their journey on the Oregon Trail for up to a year before their departure. While the men took care of the wagons, farm equipment, and animals, their wives prepared and packed foodstuffs and household items. But above all, they sewed quilts for bedding since travel guides to westward emigration suggested that each family should bring along two to three quilts for each person.

While they packed some quilts as keepsakes in trunks, they kept others available for daily use. These quilts served a variety of purposes not only on the trip west, but also once the pioneers arrived at their destination.

Quilts originated as a practical need but eventually they also became personal works of art. They served as window and door coverings. Hanging quilts on the dirt walls of a sod house made them seem more homelike. Quilts could serve as privacy walls, creating sleeping areas in a sod house or one room cabin. Quilts folded and laid on a board placed between two chairs became a sofa.

During the years between the American Revolution and the beginning of the westward migration, bedcovers blossomed with cotton cutouts salvaged from leftover bits of expensive European chintz. Women carefully snipped around the bird and floral motifs of the imported chintzes and appliquéd them on fields of plain domestic cloth to make the most of the patterned fabric available to them. Known as patchwork quilts, these served a practical purpose—to keep people warm in bed at night.

But it was during the years of the westward journey, from 1840 to 1870, that women stitched the majority of patchwork quilts. As families moved west, fabric became scarce, so women creatively used what they had. While their Colonial forebearers used bits of eftover fabric, pioneer women also used pieces of old clothing and household linens. They stitched these scraps together in designated patterns with some pretty folksy names—the Hole in the Barn Door, Rocky Mountain Puzzle, Log Cabin, Galaxy of Stars, and hundreds of others that reflected the joys and sorrows of pioneer women’s lives. Only rarely did quilters use new pieces of cloth.

The most intricate pattern quilts were the result of a group of pioneer women sewing together in what became known as a “quilting bee.”
 

Techniques as well as tastes changed during this part of the 19th century. The enlarged chintzes and monochrome copperplate prints made way for tiny domestic calicoes roller printed in a new range of colors. Also, the cramped quarters of prairie homesteads required smaller quilts, so women began piecing and appliqueing lap-sized blocks in patterns rather than beginning with a quilt-sized piece of cloth.

Crazy Quilt
The crazy quilt, a seemingly wild pattern made more coherent by a series of straight seams, is the oldest quilt pattern. Early quilters used any scrap or remnant available, regardless of its color, design, or fabric type. They fitted and stitched together pieces of worn out clothing, women's calico dresses, men's pants and shirts, household linens, and other oddly shaped fabric scraps. Because of a lack of space and quilting supplies, individual pioneer women often assembled lap-sized quilts suitable for throwing over the legs when riding in a wagon or carriage in cold weather.

Crazy quilts, which Victorian women also used to decorate their parlors, featured rich colors and textures and displayed fine embroidery skills. Victorian quilters filled their quilts with bits and pieces of their personal past; a piece of father's vest, a husband's tie, lace from a wedding veil, or ribbons commemorating political events. The result was a riot of color with a story behind each scrap.

The quilts of the late 1800s illustrate the extravagance of the Victorian age. In fact, the quilts that most typify those years aren’t really quilts at all, but thin parlor throws meant to thrill the eye—not warm the body. At home on the tabletops, sofa arms, and piano backs of overstuffed parlors, these throws had neither quilting nor batting. Yet, in their own splashy way, they were as much masterworks of American stitchery as their pioneer predecessors.

Pieced from the best silks, satins, and velvets—materials newly available to the growing middle class—the patchwork throws of this era are rich mosaics of color and texture, emphasizing proficiency in embroidery and the mastering of different types of stitches. Women's magazines of the day printed detailed embroidery instructions for anyone to follow.

Quilt patterns varied widely. While the patchwork quilt was usually more of an overall design, quilters created specific patterns that have been passed down to today. Four of them—the Nine Patch, the Pinwheel, the Double Wedding Ring, and the Eight Point Star, and all their variations—were particularly popular.

Nine Patch Pattern
Pioneer women especially liked the Nine Patch pattern, one of the simplest and quickest quilts to sew, because it was a good way to use up every small scrap of fabric available. Women made quilts to use every day, so they needed to quickly sew them together for warmth. On the prairie, sewing was an essential skill. Young girls learned to sew blocks before they learned to read. At an early age, often as young as 3 or 4, girls were taught to piece simple blocks such as the Nine Patch. Many were very skilled at piecing a block by age 5.

Pinwheel Pattern
The Pinwheel pattern first appeared in pioneer quilting during the 1840s. It developed as a representation of the water pump windmills found on farms or small towns along the trails westward. Water was not only necessary for cooking, drinking and bathing, but it was also a power source especially in timber and grain mills. Quilters considered the pinwheel quilt to not only be decorative, it also paid homage to the windmill that allowed them to survive pioneer life.

When a quilt became so badly worn around the edges that even rebinding could not rejuvenate it, a seamstress would cut it down to eliminate the worn areas, or rework it into a child's quilt. Any quilt was too precious to discard.

During the early 20th century, women's tastes shifted from dark colors to a rainbow of pastel colors—mint greens, lemon yellows, and watermelon pinks. The Double Wedding Ring was a pattern that lent itself well to pastel fabrics. A feature of many Double Wedding Ring quilts was its scalloped edge created by the circles that made up the quilt.

Double Wedding Ring Pattern
The Double Wedding Ring pattern dates back to the 15th century. It was reminiscent of the “Gimmal ring,” a popular engagement ring in which the betrothed couple each wore one ring during their engagement, and then the rings were interlocked during the wedding ceremony and worn by the wife. In come ways this pattern is familiar to the Celtic knot motif.

This quilt pattern can be found as early as the late 19th Century. It had long been a symbol of love and romance with its interlocking rings symbolizing marriage. The quilt was traditionally made by mothers and grandmothers who made these quilts for their children and gave them as gifts on their wedding day or anniversaries.

The Star Pattern
Stars were probably the most common pattern used on pioneer quilts. Homesteaders traveling West used the stars for guidance, plus they considered stars as religious symbols of their faith in God.

Quilters employed hundreds of star patterns. Some quilts had just one large radiating star, often called the Star of Bethlehem or Blazing Star while others had dozens of smaller stars. The simplest and most popular star pattern was the Eight Pointed Star.

However, a star pattern wasn’t an easy design to cut or sew. Quilters had to be precise, as any inaccuracy in cutting or piecing became worse as the quilter added pieces. If poorly pieced, the quilt wouldn’t lie flat when finished. An intricate star pattern was one way for a quilter to show her needlework skills.

Often, a quilter deliberately sewed a mistake into a quilt. Some believed that this reflected their faith in God, for only God could make a perfect thing. Originally meant to serve as bedcovers, they’re now displayed as works of American folk art.


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