by BQHL listmember Xenia Cord
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In the early 1900s a new design interest, the "Colonial Revival," affected many aspects of popular culture in the United States, including fashions, home decor, and leisure activities such as needlework. Women's "art needlework" and "fancywork" catalogs, retail shops, and women's magazines turned to a romanticized view of colonial life for inspiration, and promoted quiltmaking as the feminine ideal. In a highly commercial market these sources and others suggested that quiltmaking could be simplified through the purchase of pre-cut or ready-designed quilts in kit format. Sold frequently through color illustrations with descriptions emphasizing nostalgic or family relationships, kits provided a variety of fabric components to aid in quiltmaking, and were promoted as an affirmation of women's needle arts and traditional values.
Kit quilts seem to have been a peculiarly American form of quiltmaking, and apparently only appeared elsewhere as imports and curiosities. In Quilt Treasures of Great Britain (1995), contributing authors Pauline Adams and Margaret Tucker refer to "The Outsiders" when discussing kit quilts (pp. 65-68) found in the heritage search. However, their discussion speaks only briefly (and somewhat disparagingly) of kit quilts, and then gravitates to other American designs not generally seen in kit form. The "Dogwood pattern on a soft green ground" may refer to a Marie Webster pattern, and one which is rarely seen even in the States. Their further description of "tissue paper shapes to make templates" also points to Webster, who was the only designer known to have used this format. Because Webster is generally accorded the honor of having begun the American quilt revival in the early 1900s, more research might well be done on these "outsiders." NEXT......