Quilts: Fancy Sleepy Covers That Are Older Than You Think
If there is one type of historical detail we tend to ignore, it is the details involving basic human needs. Where did people pee? What tools do people use to cook? People who are looking to history for these kinds of details can find themselves wandering in a vast dessert.
Today we tackle the most basic human need, sleep, and what our ancestors snuggled under when meeting it. By which I mean, quilts.
Defining Terms
Most people have a fair idea of what you mean when you say ‘quilt,’ but we can be more specific. A quilt is a layered blanket, with a decorated top and a backing. Usually there is a middle layer as well. The word ‘quilting’ comes from sewing the layers together.
Oldest Mention
The oldest quilt from Europe that you can see today was sewn in 1390 in Sicily. It’s called the Tristan Quilt, and reputedly it was a wedding gift to Pietro di Luigi Guicciardini and Laodomia Acciaiuli, though it might have been made earlier.
But there were older quilts. The first mention of a quilt was from France in 1297, a whole hundred years before the Tristan Quilt.
The inspiration seems to have come from Asia and the Middle East, where sewing layers as a shirt to wear under armor or to make warm clothes were common.
Different Traditional Forms
These early quilts were wholecloth, meaning the decorative top layer was one piece. All the decoration was from white or brown stiches forming pictures and motifs. Bits of cotton would be stuffed into an element to emphasize a figure. This is referred to as trapunto. Corded quilting, where a literal cord was wedged under the top layer and into sewn channels, was also used.
The biggest creators of these quilts were in Marseille. In fact, a chamber of commerce was set up there to produce quilts that were decorated with broderie de Marseille in white work. This was the stuff of luxury, and they were adorned with noble heraldic symbols, royal monograms, and Arthurian tales. At one point, 6,000 women were hand stitching 5,000 articles like this a year.
The patchwork we now associate with quilting makes, if you will excuse the pun, patchy appearances early on, but didn’t really come into its own until later. The first mention of this type of quilt is the Impruneta cushion, which was a pillow used in the coffin of a priest who left office in 1477.
The technique of paper piecing, or what we Americans call English Paper Piecing, appeared in the 1700’s. The idea was that you could buy or make paper shapes and then wrap fabric pieces around them, sew them together into a block, and then remove the paper.
The first pattern using the paper piecing method showed up in 1835, when Lady Godey’s Book published it. It took off from there: amateurs could order pattern pieces and put together their blocks in group projects, frequently as wedding gifts or as gifts to the local church.
There were entrepreneurs following in the footsteps of the fine ladies of Marseilles too. A woman named Mary Brown was commissioned to make album quilts for 20 years after her husband died, and she now has a couple examples in a private collection.
Applique and embedding pieces entered the quilting world around the same time, giving us ornate pieces of art.
During the 1920’s and 1930’s, there was a re-discovery of quilting as a pastime, and free form quilts with a ton of embellishment became popular in the Victorian era.
Quilting Today
Quilts are cheap enough for most people’s beds these days, but that doesn’t make it less of an art form for those artistes who prefer to work in fabric. It is possible to find groups online who are making quilts together as big projects, or to find magazines dedicated to patterns. And it gives you the chance to connect with those hard-sewing ancestors of ours.
Sources:
“Hidden Treasures, Quilts from 1600 to 1860” Lori Lee Triplett and Kay Triplett
The Tristan quilt | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections (vam.ac.uk)
Quilt Pattern names — Antique Quilt History
Marseille: White Corded Quilting | International Quilt Museum — Lincoln, NE