In the days of early America, men, women and children were taught that inactivity was sinful. Men had jobs, children had school and women had household tasks. But between the chores, what could a woman do to keep her hands from becoming idle?
Many turned to quilting, not just to create a useful object for the home but also as an expression of fondness for a loved one or for artistic expression. In fact, it was the only kind of artistic expression many women were allowed: It could be done inside the home, was acceptably domestic, could be learned from other women and didn’t require training at an arts academy, which a woman couldn’t get into anyway.
A new exhibit at New Britain Museum of American Art showcases a wide spectrum from the history of American quilting. Forty-one quilts are on display in a variety of styles, almost all of them made by women between 1770 to 2014.
“These are the key to understanding the lives of women in the 18th and 19th centuries,” said Doug Hyland, director of the museum. “They could do needlework and they could do watercolors. They couldn’t do much else.”
Lynne Bassett of Palmer, Mass., a quilt historian and exhibit co-curator, said early American quilts are noteworthy in that they were made with precision but without precision instruments. “They were made before the days of clear plastic rules and rotary cutters and plastic templates,” she said.
Bassett first became interested in quilting when she was 5 years old, reading “Little House in the Big Woods” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. “She writes about making a dove-in-the-window quilt block,” she said. “I thought ooooh, what’s that?” Her mother bought her her first sewing maching at age 6, and the first thing she tried making was quilt blocks. Strangely, her mother didn’t want her to make quilts.
“She disliked them intensely. She grew up in the Depression and quilts meant poverty,” she said. “She wanted nothing to do with old things, hand-me-downs, reused things.” Bassett made her first quilt in her late 20s, when she was a grad student at UConn majoring in costume and textile history.
Bassett’s favorite quilt in the exhibit is a showstopping 123-1/2- by 115-1/4 inch cotton-and-chintz Star of Bethlehem quilt, made in 1820. It likely was made to celebrate the birth of a child, Hyland said.
“People associate quilting with ‘stitch and bitch,’ women sitting around sewing and gossiping, but often quilts were made to celebrate something, a friendship, a birth, a wedding, a death,” Hyland said.
A “Baltimore album”-style quilt — seven squares deep and six wide, with a different floral pattern in each square — is still vividly red, having been made in 1857. Another album-style quilt, made in 1869 by the First Society of Spiritualists, is more faded but features some quirky items in its squares, including scissors, cows, crossed flags and a Masonic symbol. A brightly colorful 1930 wedding band-style quilt features interlocking rings.
Hyland said “this exhibit is all about sentiment,” and that is seen in Anna T. McConnell’s “Pieced Quilt,” made from strips of silk hat linings in memory of her hatmaker husband. A crazy quilt made between 1890 and 1910 was created with discarded gold cigar ribbons.
Even though old-style quiltmakers did consider themselves artists, the quilt as art-for-arts-sake is where the exhibit has its most ample representation in the 20th and 21st centuries. Several spectacular examples are in the show, including a striking “Improvisational Quilt” made at the Hartford Artisans Center, designed by Carrie Ashford and made by Ashford, Liz Beman, Dorletha Clyde, Lela Kennedy, Marjorie Ross, Elizabeth Shepard, Leola Washington and Carol Washington. Barbara Barrick McKee shows a bear guarding his fishing hole, and Kate Themel’s quilt shows a police car in New York City on New Year’s Eve, its hood reflecting the bright lights of the big city.
Richard Killeaney’s “Missing the Point” is a sentimental musing on the sunsets in his childhood home, made with strips of red and pink men’s shirts. Marlene Shea’s delightful “Sunflower Serenade” shows a saxophonist playing music in his garden, with a smiling sun shining down.
Hyland said one unusual aspect to the quilts in the exhibit is that almost all of them are traceable to a named needleworker. Many quilts are passed down through the generations and families forget who made it.
Bassett said that although stitched textile art dates back to ancient Egypt, American women turned it into a distinctive national craft form. “Patchwork started centuries ago,” she said. “But Americans took the idea of the patchwork or or applique block and just ran with it.”
Institute For Community Research
Robert Charles Hudson is one of the artists in the NBMAA quilt show, and he and his family are the focus of another show, “Warmth and Creativity: The Hudson Family Quilts,” opening on Oct. 30 at Institute for Community Research Gallery, 2 Hartford Square West, 146 Wyllys St., in Hartford.
The exhibit, which will be up until Dec. 19, shows quilts by Hudson, his mother, the late Laura Hudson, and Laura Hudson’s husband Joseph Hudson created in the southern African American tradition.
The opening reception, from 5 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 30, will feature performances by The Second Baptist Male Chorus, with Joseph Hudson and other vocalists, and members of Women of the Cross.
Regular gallery hours are weekdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. incommunityresearch.org
“LET ME QUILT ONE MORE DAY” will be at New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington St., until Jan. 4. Museum hours are weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays until 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $12, $10 seniors, $8 students, free for children younger than 12 and for anyone from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. nbmaa.org; (860) 229-0257.
Editor’s note: This text has been edited from a previous version to correct the last name of the quilter of “Sunflower Serenade.”
