Description:
Pieced, cotton quilt laid out in lattice strips with plain (unpieced) squares with a printed design of floral sprigs and abstract spot motifs with a gris-like addition of printed strips in browns, pinks, and white, set on point and sashed with darker-brown, striped calico, and edged a matching printed border on all sides; and with two cutout corner to fit around bed posts; a three-piece backing of a plain light brown cotton which was posssibly originally glazed or polished; and cotton batting. The quilting is done in parallel vertical lines through the blocks in tan cotton (8 stitches per inch). The quilt was said to come from the Joshua Libby family and passed to the family of William Lindquist of Scarboro (or Scarborough), Maine. The Libbys were a prominent family in Scarboro, who first settled there around 1659. This distinctively utilitarian quilt is made of 1840s cotton dress fabrics. As pieced calico quilts became more common and inexpensive, they fell out of favor with the arbiters of fashion, who called them "old-fashioned," "ugly," and a "beggar's patchwork." Pieced quilts came to be associated with rural areas and often with less affluent families. While some authors romantized pieced quilts, advice author Eliza Leslie sniffed in "The House Book" (1843): "Patch-work quilts of old calico are only seen in inferior chambers; but they are still worth making for servants' beds. The custom of buying new calico to cut into various patch-work figures, for what was called handsome patch-work has becom obsolete."
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2000.47.1 |
