What a Legacy Embroidered Quilts

Abstract

Quilts—especially embroidered quilts—are worth spending time to study, to look at the overall beauty and creativity, and to let admiration for the maker well up inside. The women who made the quilts seen in this survey were not the typical Victorian era women with nothing to do but were local Pennsylvania women who had farms, families, and household work. They were women who made quilts of all designs for home use and gifts and supplied beauty in all their quilts, especially the embroidered quilts. The success of crazy quilts was in the design and placement of small scraps of fabric and in the embroidery. Here was a place where daring imagination and creativity, as well as embroidery skill, could be shown to the world.