How did Kentucky’s quilters create their unique quilt making traditions throughout the 19th century and redefine perceptions about quilts into the 21st century?

In historical memory, quilts often evoke thoughts of grandmothers, of family tradition, of the quaint rural past, or perhaps even a craft relegated to yesteryear.  However, in her comprehensive research into Kentucky’s rich history of quilt making, Linda Elisabeth LaPinta, Associate Professor of English at Elizabethton Community College and editor of Conversations with Kentucky Writers, offers the reader a complex, detailed, and scholarly history of the quilts of Kentucky that transcends the notion that they are simply a nostalgic family heirloom.  In these pages, they instead become objects of diverse cultural meaning, regional history, and artistic expression that are still a significant part of Kentucky’s craft making traditions to this day.

She begins her study with the history of materials, methods, and technological changes that set the trajectory for not only the popularity of quilting as a craft, but also more nuanced construction methods, color choices, and patterns over time.  Quilters in 19^th-century Kentucky benefited from the rise of steamboat transportation, which shipped a new array of fabrics from domestic as well as international suppliers.  Changes in supply also ran concurrently with new discoveries about dyeing fabrics that resulted in vibrant new hues, especially for more affordable materials such as printed cotton calicos.  Where once quilters might have been relegated to only locally available materials and natural dyes, such as indigo for blue and madder for reds, now the production technologies of the Industrial Revolution offered a shift toward more creative and colorful quilts.

LaPinta’s next chapters explore the identity of early Kentucky quilt makers, those women of the past whose work still exists in museum collections or as private family heirlooms. With colorful images of their quilts alongside short vignettes about the makers, the reader is able to put a human story to what might otherwise be an artifact judged on craftsmanship pattern alone. The women in these short, but informative, biographies range from wealthy women to the enterprising pioneer women of early white settlements in Appalachia. These were the craftspeople who passed down their knowledge, techniques, patterns, and finished quilts to ensuing generations of Kentucky families.

In Chapter Four, LaPinta examines a long neglected aspect of the history of quilt making by discussing the contributions of Black women to the history of Kentucky’s textile traditions. Though she observes that the deliberate anonymity of enslaved craftswomen by their enslavers often makes it harder to definitively document a maker, we must acknowledge that these women almost assuredly made many unattributed quilts and were definitely, in the production of cotton or flax, the enslaved labor force that produced raw materials for finished textile goods. Yet LaPinta is able to attribute some quilts to Black craftspeople, including the well-known dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, as well as the generational craftsmanship of the Bond family and the work of the enslaved women Ellen Morton Littlejohn and Margaret Morton Bibb (see an example of their work in the photographs connected to this Book Note).

It seems fitting that such a thoughtful, well researched, and unique volume dedicated to the craft of quilt making centers on the state of Kentucky, home to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, which sees approximately 40,000 visitors each year. LaPinta’s focus on the quilts of a single state is ultimately the book’s strength. Many histories of quilting attempt to synthesize too much information, leaving the reader with so much to analyze that the individual makers and innovators in the craft get lost in the fray. For those interested in another regional history of quilt making, renowned quilt historians Merikay Waldvogel and Bets Ramsey’s, The Quilts of Tennessee: Images of Domestic Life Prior to 1930, explores Tennessee’s quilting traditions in a similar fashion. By focusing on Kentucky’s quilt making traditions and legacies, LaPinta focuses the story on a concise, fascinating regional history that tells a dynamic story about the people and place where quilts evolved from humble, utilitarian bed coverings into artwork worthy of the finest galleries in the nation.

Amanda McCrary Smith
Middle Tennessee State University, Public History
Regional Historic Preservation Planner: South Central Tennessee Development District