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Last night I was looking through a VERY old book (1997) from ‘Country Living.’ It was ‘Handmade Country’ and I had just been using the book as a ‘stacker’ for some other decor because it had a nice cover. Anyhow, there was a section about Quilting, and the practice of suspending the current quilt you were working on from the ceiling to save space. So, I went looking for more information and found a nice website about the History of Quilting.

“The history of quilts began long before European settlers arrived in the New World. People in nearly every part of the world had used padded fabrics for clothing, bedding, and even armor. With the arrival of the English and Dutch settlers in North America, quilting took on a new life and flourished.

The term “quilt” comes from the Latin culcita, meaning a stuffed sack. The word has come to have 2 meanings. It is used as noun, meaning the 3-layer stitched bedcovering. It is also used as a verb, meaning the act of stitching through the 3 layers to hold them together.

A quilt is a cloth sandwich, with a top, which is usually the decorated part, a back, and a filler in the middle. Under the general term of patchwork are of 3 different types of quilts: (1) the plain or whole cloth quilt, (2) applique quilts, and (3) pieced or patchwork quilts.

The quilt, as we know it in America, was originally a strictly utilitarian article, born of the necessity of providing warm covers for beds. Quilts were also used as hangings for doors and windows that were not sealed well enough to keep out the cold. The earliest American quilts, made by English and Dutch settlers, were so intimately connected to everyday life of the early colonists that no record of them exists.”

Interesting stuff! I’m sure Quilters know all of this, but having never really ‘quilted’ anything, (though I own a few) it was very interesting!

https://www.quilting-in-america.com/History-of-Quilts.html