Quilt Piecing in the 1890s – Your Memory Quilts

I visited the Benson-Hammond House in Linthicum Heights, MD to learn a little bit about quilt piecing in the 1890’s. I was greeted at the door by a lovely woman in period costume who was sitting at the dining room table marking and cutting fabric to construct a quilt.

We spent some time talking about quilt making as a form of art, a form of therapy, a form of social consciousness, and how it was sometimes the only way a woman could speak her truth. We touched on the underground railroad, which was quite active in this region, and how popular mythology hold that quilts were used to indicate station stops. People say that if escaping slaves saw a “Log Cabin” quilt with a red center hanging outside a home, that indicated a safe place to seek assistance. However, “Log Cabin” quilts typically had a red center because it was indicative of a burning hearth, the center of any home.

There were several quilts on display in the house. My favorite was a decorative quilt hanging in the stairway. I was told that it would have been a gift for a special occasion, not an “everyday” quilt used to carry things or put on a bed for warmth. A wedding gift, perhaps. I love the bright colors.

The quilter appliqued the colored fabric onto plain white squares. I can’t help but think about the amount of time it took her to carefully stitch each individual arrow onto each blank square, and marvel at how she was able to get well defined points and rounded edges on each piece without a rotary cutter and electric lights.

Some other examples of quilts from the 1890s were much more utilitarian. Bed sized and crib sized log cabin quilts. Notice the crib quilt has the red center, but the bed sized one is blue.

My guide told me about postage stamp quilts. These were projects that were created using postage stamp sized pieces of fabric that were cut from dress or other clothing scraps or sent to you by a friend who moved to a different location. You could incorporate your friends scraps into your project.

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I toured the outside buildings by myself. There was a summer kitchen with barrels for herbs and a space to do the laundry added to the rear.