PROJECTS & IDEAS | DECORATING

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Traditions Remembered

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Antebellum Legacy

We learned to sew patchwork at school while we were learning the alphabet; and almost every girl had a bed quilt of her own begun, with an eye to future house furnishing.
Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood

Quilt name: Whig Rose
Maryland, c. 1860

Appliqué continued to be a popular quilting technique into the 1860s with the Baltimore Album quilts being the most popular. Quilters would try to outdo each other with elaborate creations of bouquets, wreaths, and cornucopias. Album quilts gained popularity. Quilts were used to raise funds and make statements of friendship, or for social commentary. Remember, women couldn’t vote, but still they needed to feel involved. Pieced quilts developed diversity. The rigid lines of squares and triangles were softened with curved corners to form blocks, such as Hearts and Gizzards. An important ideal set in the mid-1800s prevails today--the preference for light-color backgrounds for both patchwork and appliqué.

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