Wool Quilts

 

Most of the pictures are from online auctions unless otherwise captioned.

It's still February around here---the reason people made wool quilts.

Nebraska Historical Society

Marie Tejkova Prokopek (1869-1940)

Here are some favorites from the files made of the heavy

suiting wools widely available from about 1890-1950.

Some were made from samples.

Other sources: household sewing scraps,

worn out clothing,

factory cutaways.

They can be rather austere and minimal:

Modern

Columbia Gorge Museum

Or monuments to late Victorian taste

when embroidered

Dated 1909

and/or appliqued.

Dated 1906

They're relatively easy to date: 

Wool fabrics (with cottons and some mixed fibers)

often embellished with simple embroidery or complex.

Sometimes quilted but usually tacked.

Tied wool crazy quilt dated 1890

They grew out of the wildly fashionable crazy quilt style with

wools substituting for earlier silks as silk became relatively more

expensive and hard to find with global politics.

Dated 1892

Dated 1899

I'd conservatively date these wool, tied pieces to after 1890.

In the 1880s there was plenty of silk available.

Dated 1942

People continued to make warm wool bedcovers into the 1950s.

Dated 1959

But the detail was a thing of the past.