During the Civil War, when women did not have the right to vote and were barred frequently from stating their opinions in public, they found a voice in the multihued quilts they made by candlelight.
Before radio, TV or movies, the quilt became a medium to express the themes of the Underground Railroad and the push for secession.
“When you find the white man–the Union-hating white man–let the cannon play,” Cornelia Dow, the wife of a Union general, stitched onto her quilt, according to Ricky Clark, an Oberlin, Ohio-based quilt historian.
A Southern general’s wife was content to simply stitch the word “secession” onto her quilt, along with the South Carolina state seal and the names of prominent people who shared her views.
Earlier, the pioneers had stitched quilts not only to provide warmth on their brutal journeys westward but also to serve as a historical and social chronicle of their trips.
Similarly, in the early 20th Century, supporters of temperance used quilts to spread their messages on the ills of alcohol. But then, for a half-century or more, the quilt came to be regarded more as a beautiful if utilitarian item: a coveted bedspread, a charming wedding gift, a historic conversation piece.
Now, with the extraordinary attention generated by the AIDS quilt–which has toured the country for almost a decade–the handmade coverings have re-emerged as political vehicles for an array of issues that were scarcely on Abraham Lincoln’s national agenda.
Moreover, in an era in which technology has allowed countless protesters to vie for America’s shrinking attention span, when there’s a laser focus on such high-tech means of communication as the Internet, the decidedly low-tech quilt has managed to rise above the electronic din.
AIDS, domestic violence, fair housing, incest, peace, and drug and alcohol abuse–such issues are being bannered by quilts across the nation to generate support and to depict vividly the human condition.
“We’re undergoing a quilt revival and a lot of different people are getting into quilts–it is an expression of their solidarity,” said Clark, who has written about the social significance of quilts.
With statistics showing that less than 8 percent of the 1,500 to 2,000 rallies in Washington each year receive any news coverage, groups need something more than just their collective voices to generate interest, says Clark McPhail, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an expert on collective action and social movements.
“Unlike a march or rally or even a petition, these things are tangible; they have longevity,” McPhail said. “Unless you turn out 100,000 people, you have very little means of getting your message across unless you have something that can focus the public’s attention.”
What’s more, a quilt naturally evokes appealing images. “What do you think of when you think of a quilt?” asked Patricia Konicki, director of the Fair Housing Center of Lake County, which last week displayed a traveling quilt promoting that cause in Waukegan. “You think of home, you think of family, you think of generations.”
With its thousands of panels as individual as the people they were designed to commemorate, a quilt satisfies one of the cardinal rules of public relations: Provide a photo opportunity.
“When it’s over all you do is fold it up, place it in a Fed Ex box and ship it off,” Konicki says of the fair housing quilt, which she promptly sent to the City of Grand Rapids, Mich., for display at the Equal Opportunity Department. “There’s no trucks, no movers, no hassle. That’s what’s made this quilt so special and successful. It’s reached thousands of people over the last few years with minimal effort and expense.”
Beyond quilts’ staying power, though, Konicki and others point to the obvious but powerful metaphors that a piece of cloth can evoke: The quilt as the sum of individual parts; the deeply personal struggles linked to the larger movement. And, of course, there is the quilt as protection from a cold world.
Hollywood took note of the quilt’s role in the national lexicon last year when it produced a movie adaptation of the best seller “How to Make An American Quilt,” in which quilt-making represents marriage and life itself.
Writers, politicians and preachers haven’t been able to resist using quilts to make a point, either.
“America is not like a blanket, one piece of unbroken cloth–the same color, the same texture the same size,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson has said in his speeches. “It is more like a quilt–many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.”
Konicki decided to bring the fair housing quilt to Waukegan–with its patches signed by the children who made them–after seeing a pamphlet about it in Washington in 1991.
“It was colorful, it was charming,” she said. “Its message went straight to the heart.”
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That’s what educators from Tinley Park-based Kirby School District 140 had in mind last year when they made a “drug-free” quilt. The best squares submitted by children from each grade level at schools in Orland Park, Tinley Park and Orland Hills were sewn into the huge quilt, which is still admired during Drug Education Week.
Among the squares submitted was a piece by a 10-year-old that bore this simple message: “There’s no hope with dope.”
“It brought back the flavor of what they used to do years ago when people gathered in a house, talked and quilted,” said Dennis Gurney, principal at Orland Park’s Fernway School. “It’s always hanging there as a reminder of everyone’s support and concern.”
The United Way of Elgin last year used a quilt to emphasize the coming together of volunteers, donors and member agencies during the annual fundraising drive.
Photographs that were heat-transferred onto the quilt depict clients receiving a helping hand from member agencies, including children in Special Olympics and the elderly who are in hospice care. Created by South Elgin resident Linda Marie LoBianco, the quilt is permanently housed at the United Way offices but it is displayed periodically throughout the community.
“We feel it shows so much of the United Way spirit that we want to display it as a symbol of what we are about for the next 50 years,” said Carol Gieske, the agency’s executive vice president.
The art of quilt-making came to America with British settlers in the 1600s. But those early quilts were primarily of the English style, in which they appeared crafted from a single piece of cloth.
By the early 1800s, American pioneers had begun making quilts by sewing blocks of cloth together, a method that was cheaper and required less space for sewing. Eventually, quilts began to reflect the social concerns of those who made them.
There’s also something more intangible that has kept the quilt threading through history.
Amy Dryfoos, a member and past president of Village Quilters of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, said, “The actual process of making a quilt is just as satisfying as the finished project.”