Classic Quilts

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Beautiful, touchable, emotionally satisfying, handmade quilts are also a
historical record of women’s lives and their times.

Ruth McKendry is an expert in 19th-century textiles and those who made
them. Her observation of the infinite differences in quilts, even in
those using standard patterns, has reinforced her conviction that a
woman’s personality is mirrored in her quilts.

In Classic Quilts, the author covers quilts from the Old World as well
as those from North America; quilting bees and the marriage bed; makers,
meanings, and patterns. She notes that women often found their
inspiration in the natural world around them (“even the fields and
fences”) and that most patterns originated in times when signs of
common objects had symbolic meanings. The chapter on meanings and
origins is rich in insights.

The book includes many color photographs, and the annotations to the
full-page photographs are especially interesting. (The Mary Morris
Quilt, for example, was made in 1825 by a disabled 14-year-old girl.
Unable to walk, Morris became a skilled needleworker at an early age.)
The book also includes detailed instructions with patterns for the
striking Three Tulips in a Pot quilt as well as for a “Sampler,” in
which each of the quilt’s 30 blocks is different.

Classic Quilts is a valuable contribution to the genre and to the
history of women’s lives.