In hard times, women made art
By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times
Quilts show the softer side of hard times during the Great Depression.
To recent FSU doctoral graduate Jeana Brunson, the quilts made during those
"waste not, want not" years are a three-dimensional history of
Florida lifestyles, values and attitudes.
Brunson, chief curator at the Museum of Florida History, studied Florida
quilts from the Depression era for her doctoral dissertation in textiles
and consumer sciences. Using historical photographs, records from home demonstration
clubs and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), she offers a glimpse
into the lives of ordinary women who made extraordinary art.
In those days, Brunson said, a typical quilt was made of printed and solid
cotton fabrics, combining scraps and purchased materials pieced together
in a block design with plain borders and straight edges. The typical quiltmaker
was an older, married-with-children homemaker who lived in a small community.
"Quiltmaking provided an important leisure activity, an opportunity
for social interaction, and reflected the broader cultural values of cooperation
and community," said Brunson.
A quilting revival began in the late 1920s, paralleling another in the Colonial
movement, Brunson said. Colonial Williamsburg was being restored, museums
were featuring exhibits from Colonial times, and people were returning to
the values and traditions of the past.
Because quilt patterns were regularly published in newspapers and magazines,
Florida quilts resembled those made in other regions of the country. The
most popular patterns - the Dresden Plate, the Double Wedding Ring, Grandmother's
Flower Garden and Sunbonnet Sue - produced quilts as colorful as their names,
she said.
But Brunson found a few Florida quiltmakers who added some special touches
of their own:
· A citrus packinghouse crew made a friendship quilt out of blocks
made from each woman's favorite dress fabric. It was signed "Friends
of 1938."
· A Pensacola student took blocks of cloth to parties for her friends
to sign and then stitched them all together into her own friendship quilt.
· A woman who worked at a post office started a quilt "chain letter,"
sending everyone on her list a block and getting enough blocks back to make
two quilts.
· A puff quilt made of silk instead of cotton blocks was stuffed with
cotton from a Cottondale, Fla., family's own cotton patch.
· Stitched by a woman who obviously admired then-President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, the "Miracle Quilt of Democracy" combined religion,
politics and history in an eclectic mix of images - Roosevelt's Little White
House in Warm Springs, the U.S. Navy emblem, horse-drawn wagons, airplanes
and automobiles. It is one of two Florida quilts now being shown in a traveling
exhibit of American quilts.
Many of the Great Depression quilts have been documented through the museum's
Florida quilt registry, which has recorded more than 5,000 since 1986.
"These quilts are very treasured," Brunson said. "They are
still owned by families and passed down through families."