Quilting in the Great Depression - Interweave

Quilting in the
Great Depression

CATHERINE NOLL LITWINOW

Drunkard’s Path quilt top purchased at an antique store in Des Moines, Iowa. Maker(s) unknown.
Collection of the author. 90 x 72 inches (228.6 x 182.9 cm).

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MANY QUILTS MADE IN AMERICA before World War I (1914–1918) used
gray, burgundy, and indigo fabrics. To lighten up these darker colors, quilters

often used shirting prints, fabrics with small dark designs on a white back-

ground. In the years following the war, manufacturers flooded the market with an ex-

plosion of fabrics in unlimited designs and a new color palette. Pastels abounded: lime

sherbet, pink, yellow, lavender, and light blue. Catalogs, magazines, and newspapers offered mil-

lions the opportunity to buy fabric and quilt block designs by mail order. But less than a decade

later, following the stock market crash of 1929, the economy bottomed out. Even though many

quilters could no longer purchase new fabrics, they continued to make quilts, using recycled feed

sacks or scraps left over from clothing construction.

Grandmother’s Flower
Garden pieced by
Margret Gehlsen Peter-
son Olson; quilted by
Leslie Sue Conner.
Cotton. Illinois. Begun
circa 1950; completed
2004. Collection of
Susie Conner. 96 x
71 inches (243.8 x
180.3 cm).

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Bridal Basket from a quilt kit offered in
Home Arts Needlecraft magazine, June
1939. Maker(s) unknown. Handquilted.

Cotton. Origin and date unknown.
Collection of the author. 871⁄2 x 741⁄2

inches (222.3 x 189.2 cm).

The most popular quilt pat- A Postage Stamp quilt made with no two pieces of fabric
terns of the Great Depression the same is called a Charm quilt; another variant is Trip
(1929–1939) are the Double Around the World. Irish Chain quilts contain squares and
Wedding Ring, Grandmother’s rectangles.
Flower Garden, and Dresden
Plate or Dresden Fan. Others Simple appliquéd patterns include Sun Bonnet Sue,
include Drunkard’s Path (also Overall Sam, and Butterflies. Typically, the appliqué was
known as Dove, Snake Trail, or done in buttonhole stitch with black embroidery floss or
Chain), Bow Tie, Sunbonnet pearl cotton. The Sunbonnet Sue pattern depicts a girl in
Sue, Overall Sam (also called profile. Many Sunbonnet Sue quilts have the bonnet and
Overall Bill), Butterflies, Post- the apron of one fabric and the dress and sleeve in a co-
age Stamp, and Irish Chain. ordinating color. A quilt depicting both Sunbonnet Sue
and Overall Sam (depicting a boy from the back) is spe-
The Double Wedding Ring cial, even more so when the figures have been worked in
and Grandmother’s Flower Gar- matching colors. Butterfly quilts may be either pieced or
den both call for small pieces of appliquéd. Brackman identifies fourteen pieced butterfly
fabric, thus permitting the use variants in Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns and six-
of many different fabric colors and designs and allowing teen variants of appliquéd butterflies in her Encyclopedia of
the quilter to utilize even the smallest bits of fabrics. The
individual pieces required for the Dresden Plate or Fan
pattern had to be large enough to form the blades of the
fan or segments of the plate.

Convex and concave pieces stitched together to form
a square makes up the Drunkard’s Path pattern. Barba-
ra Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns (see
Further Reading) shows twenty-seven variations of the
Drunkard’s Path. The Bow Tie pattern consists of squares
and triangles forming a bow tie oriented diagonally on the
quilt top. Some Depression-era Bow Tie quilts were made
from men’s neckties.

The variations in quilt patterns made with squares,
rectangles, and triangles are limitless. In Postage Stamp
quilts, triangles and rectangles are sewn together to form
hundreds or even thousands of 1-inch (2.5-cm) squares.

C O P Y R I G H T P I E C E W O R K ® M AG A Z I N E , I N T E RW E AV E P R E S S L LC . N OT TO B E R E P R I N T E D . A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D . PIECEWORK ONLINE

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R . Cathe-
rine Noll Litwinow is a quilter and
collector living in Bettendorf, Iowa.
She writes “HerStories,” a monthly
historical-interest column for the
Mississippi Valley Quilters Guild.
She is a Founding Mother of the
Iowa/Illinois Quilt Study Group.

FURTHER READING

The back of a Trip Around the World quilt made by Catherine Noll Brackman, Barbara. An Encyclopedia of Appliqué:
Litwinow. Handpieced and handquilted. 1930s reproduction cotton An Illustrated, Numerical Index to Traditional
fabrics. Bettendorf, Iowa. 2003. 84 x 52 inches (213.4 x 132.1 cm). and Modern Patterns. Charlottesville,Virgin-
A label with information on the quilt is affixed in the lower left corner. ia: Howell Press, 1993. Out of print.

———. Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.
Paducah, Kentucky: Collector Books,
1993.

Nickols, Pat. “Using Cotton Sacks in Quilt
Making.” PieceWork, March/April 1993.

Patterson,Veronica. “The Urge to Extrava-
gance: Prodigal Quilts.” PieceWork, Sep-
tember/October 1993.

Rhoades, Ruth.“Feed Sacks in Georgia:Their
Manufacture, Marketing, and Consumer
Use.” Uncoverings.Volume 18 of the Re-
search Papers of the American Quilt Study
Group, 1997.

Walvogel, Merikay. Soft Covers for Hard Times.
Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas Nelson,
1990.

Wildemuth, Susan. “Marie Webster: Early-
Twentieth-Century Quilt Designer.” Piece-
Work, September/October 2007.

All photographs by Joe Coca.

Appliqué: An Illustrated, Numerical Index to Traditional and In Search of a
Modern Patterns (see Further Reading). Designers such as Double Wedding Ring Quilt
Anne Orr and Marie Webster published quilt patterns in Although I come from at least four generations of quilters, our family had
magazines and newspaper columns during this era.
only two handquilted quilts while I was growing up in northwest Iowa; the
Another avenue to quiltmaking was by purchasing a others were tied comforters. One of the two was a Double Wedding Ring in
kit containing material for a quilt top marked with num- Depression-era pastels, with pink in the arcs and center of the rings. When
bers showing the correct placement for the pattern pieces, that quilt was given to a younger sister, finding a pink Wedding Ring quilt for
fabric for which was also included. The quilter had only to myself became a mission.
cut, match, and stitch the pieces to the top, then finish it.
Quilt kits, many by designer Marie Webster, were widely One year, our hometown Arthur Methodist Church held a quilt show at
available by mail order. which members of the community were encouraged to exhibit their quilts. It
was at this show that my mother, Marie Hosier Noll, saw a pink-and-white
Quilts made during the Great Depression added beau- Double Wedding Ring quilt belonging to Veronica Roeder. Veronica told Mom
ty to homes as well as providing warmth and comfort. So that the quilt had been made for her own wedding by Eliza Schonau Noll, my
many quilts were made that nearly every family, textile grandfather’s sister-in-law. The coincidence of small town living! After much
auction, antique mall, or antique show has some of these negotiation, Mom was able to purchase the quilt for me. Veronica realized that
quilts, each one testifying to the creativity and frugality I would treasure it, and I do.
of Depression-era quilters.
—C. N. L.

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