Quaint quilts have been gracing our living quarters since the early 19th century.
Back then quiltmaking was a big part of American social life and quilting bees were as important as the sewing circles women joined.Let's step back in time for a moment and see how quilts were made and the fun women had making them.
In preparation for the quilting, women would sit at home and piece together discarded patches of fabric. The padding, backing and quilting on the one and only community frame would then be done as a group and, as such, became a real social event.
In the morning the ladies would gather at the home of the woman who would end up owning the quilt, and they would proceed to pad, line roll and quilt the fabrics, busily working until suppertime, when the sweethearts of the unmarried quilters and husbands of the married quilters were invited to dinner. The men arrived in their Sunday best in respect for the ladies and the work they had done. After dinner there was singing, dancing and courting.
Some quilt parties were more significant than others. For example, if the quilting party was gathered to produce a wedding gift for a young bride and groom, it was placed on the floor when finished. Then a cat was put in the middle of the quilt and all the other young singles sat down around it. It was said that whoever's head the cat would jump over would be the next bride or bridegroom.
When a man celebrated his 21st birthday, New England quilters often presented him with a "freedom quilt," a token of independence that symbolized his freedom to leave home. It was also a means of convenience - since he would no longer have his family's quilts to keep him warm, he could use this gift until he found a wife to make another one.
Memory quilts were made in memory of the deceased. The quilt was constructed from the clothing of the departed. It sounds sad, but it did provide a warm way to remember the dead.
Then there was the bride's quilt, usually covered with hearts. Actually, before 1840 the sign of the heart on quilts was used only when decorating for a bride. The super-sti-tion was that if a heart was used for anything for a girl before it adorned her bride's quilt, the girl would never marry.