History Of Quilting. Part 1

"How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?" says the Prince to Falstaff in Henry IV (Part I, Act IV, sc. ii) - showing that, when Shakespeare wrote, the padded quilt was a natural homely image for a fat man. By about 1900 the phrase, if it meant anything to most readers of Shakespeare, would have suggested an eiderdown an object which Shakespeare certainly did not know in anything like its present form. "A bed-cover of two cloths sewed together with something soft between them" is the definition of a quilt in Chamber's Twentieth Century Dictionary, and that is the sense in which the term is used here. The bald definition does not suggest that quilts are a promising subject. But quilting is one of the few handicrafts, and the only needlework, still carried on in this country which embodies an unbroken tradition stretching back to an obscure origin in the distant past. Moreover, the words "sewed together" are important; the lines of stitching, which hold together the two pieces of material and the soft padding between, form patterns, and it is these which give the traditional quilts their characteristic beauty and interest. Information about the history of quilting is scanty. The Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition) tells us that the word "quilt" came into English from the Old French cuilte, which was derived from the Latin culcita or culcitra, meaning a stuffed mattress or cushion. Also the Low Latin culcita puncta, a stitched or quilted cushion (probably a form of quilt), became through a series of changes counterpane, which has now lost its sense of something padded. Although the earliest form of quilt may have been a warm coverlet, quilting was also used a great deal in body armour

The Norman hawberk might be of chain mail or "of thick cotton and old linen padded and quilted in lozenges, squares or lines”. In the thirteenth century "the knight's hawberk is worn over a gambeson of linen, quilted linen or cotton, which lesser men wear with a steel cap for all defence." The fourteenth-century knight seems to have been particularly well padded, for he wore a haketon of some soft material, over this a hawberk of mail, over the hawberk a leather garment, and over this again a sleeveless gambeson or pourpoint of leather or quilted work, studded and enriched. Chaucer's Sir Thopas, in the latter half of this century, wore a quilted haketon next his shirt, and over that the habergeon, a lesser hawberk of chain mail. Froissart mentions a knight whose haketon, worn under his coat of mail, was "stuffed with twisted silk." In fact a quilted garment of some sort was evidently an essential part of a suit of armour, though it might be worn either under or over the mail, and it was also a satisfactory substitute for the mail.

"The fully armed man was always a rare figure in war . . . the country gentleman, serving as light horseman or mounted archer, would hold himself well armed had he a quilted jack or brigandine and a basinet or salet." We think of armour as metal plates or rings because those were the more durable parts of it which have outlasted their use and can be seen in many collections today. The quilted gambesons, pourpoints, haketons and jacks, of perishable materials, have long since crumbled to dust. The knight returned from the wars may have found that his quilted haketon had its peace-time uses in his draughty castle in winter, and perhaps he wore it until the padding came out at the elbows and his wife threw it away. We do not know whether the quilter of those days exercised his or her ingenuity in something more elaborate than "lozenges, squares or lines," but probably the padding was thick and so no fine stitching would be possible. Much of what we know about quilting since the days of armour can be found in Notes on Quilting issued by the Victoria and Albert Museum, but this writer, in common with others, does not always distinguish between the form of quilt which is still traditional in Britain a textile sandwich in which the lines of stitching hold the filling in place between the two layers of material and other forms which are padded only in parts or even, in some cases, not padded at all. The Sicilian quilt made about 1400, illustrated in the frontispiece to the Museum booklet and often mentioned as the earliest known quilt, is a purely decorative piece of work in which only the design is padded so that it stands up in relief against a flat background. Many other pieces of work illustrated here are made with a similar technique, the design outlined usually in backstitch being stuffed with little wads of wool or with a very loosely spun two-ply woollen thread, sometimes used double or treble. The statement that "the stitching is usually done in backstitch" applies to this work but not to the traditional wadded quilting, in which running stitch was generally used in the past, as it is today. This "stuffing" technique was sometimes combined with that more usual at the present day in which the padding is first laid in smoothly between the two layers of material and then quilted through. A beautiful eighteenth-century underskirt in the Victoria and Albert Museum has its upper part worked in flat wadded quilting in a diamond pattern and the elaborate design of its lower part stuffed. Possibly these two methods of work were often combined to produce something rather grander than the ordinary flat wadded quilting. Certainly they were used together in America until the early nineteenth century. Marie Webster describes some old American white quilts in which “the design is further accentuated by having all the most prominent features, such as the leaves and petals of flowers, stuffed. To accomplish this tiny holes are made on the wrong side of each section of the design and cotton (wadding) is pushed in with a large needle until the section is stuffed full and tight. This tedious process is followed until every leaf and petal stands out in bold relief.” Florence Peto illustrates and describes what she calls a "corded spread" in which the whole background is stuffed with candlewick inserted from the back between parallel lines of sewing, whilst the design, in eighteenth-century style with flowing leaf, fruit and flower shapes, is all stuffed from the back with wads of cotton. This was made on Long Island in 1830-31. Although the forms of quilting in which the padding is only used for decorative effect and not for warmth were done in England for some hundreds of years, they do not survive as traditional crafts, nor have I found amongst the quilts still preserved in private homes any instance of this additional stuffing of a wadded quilt.

These techniques were practised for the adornment of fine houses or of fine ladies and gentlemen. Wadded quilting, although utilitarian in origin, was not restricted to padding the man-of-war and keeping the cottager warm. It was used from medieval times to adorn rich hangings and bed coverlets and, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, quilted coats, waistcoats and doublets, dresses and petticoats were fashionable. Household inventories and other lists of goods from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries mention quilts; in the latter period they are of calico or linen as well as silk and may be backed with lindsey (a mixture of wool and flax) or lutestring (a kind of glossy silk). The multitude of quilts which must have been made and used in humbler homes throughout this period have no written record and never found their way into museums. Although this site is about quilts in the strict sense of the term, inevitably patchwork and applied work come into the story because they were so much used by the traditional quilters. Mosaic patchwork, in which small pieces of material cut to geometric shapes are joined together, seems to have been made first in the eighteenth century and to have been used mainly, then and since, for the top covers of quilted coverlets. No earlier examples of this kind of work are known, and it really bears no relation to the applied work of earlier centuries, generally ecclesiastical. In America too this "pieced work" as it is called there, seems to have come into existence, without any forerunners, at about the same time. Ruth Finley says that the oldest surviving pieced quilts were made between 1775 and 1800, and although "quilts" are mentioned earlier, in inventories from 1692 and in advertisements of sales of household goods in 1727 and 1729, these are not necessarily of pieced work. "White quilts" (that is to say, made of uncut material) are also known in America, but the making of mosaic patchwork and also of applied work (known in the States, quite logically, as "patched work" or patchwork) became so popular among the American colonists, and their elaborate designs are so famous, that American writers are apt to assume that the mention of a "quilt" implies pieced or applied work. Certainly the early settlers took their quilting frames and pattern templates with them, for quilted petticoats were worn by women in the colonial days and they had quilted curtains as well as bed-covers in their houses. Whether mosaic patchwork was first added to quilting in this country or in America, or whether it sprang into existence on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously, it is impossible to decide. I like to think that it was invented here and that someone, hearing of the bitter winters and hard living conditions which her emigrated relatives had to endure, decided to send them a warm quilt and, moreover, to give it a gay top cover in this new style, which was much admired and eagerly imitated in the new country. But this is mere conjecture. Marie Webster says that only the English and Dutch settlers quilted, and Ruth Finley adds that the Pennsylvania Dutch quilts are "superlative" in quilting. The former believes that quilting, and the patchwork that came to be associated with it, developed so abundantly and have survived so extensively in the United States because of the lonely lives of the pioneer women and their need to be self-sufficing.

The "quilting bees," when neighbours were invited to come and work at the quilting frame, after the patchwork was done, also provided welcome social occasions, and the work met a need for self-expression and for gay decoration in the house. Ruth Finley gives the further information that in the early pioneer days textiles were precious, nearly all being imported, blankets were not in general use and the houses were inadequately heated. These three factors helped to popularize quilts, and especially those with one or two covers of patchwork which made use of every spare scrap of material. In this country, patchwork quilts made in the eighteenth century, or the early years of the nineteenth, are occasionally found, but probably most of them have been worn out.