quilts Are coming to burleson
Throughout the Public Art Plan process a team of local artists is creating a series of artworks that honor the tradition of quilting in the US. These artworks will include a series of Barn Quilts, installed in the late Winter on facing public spaces in Burleson’s first Barn Quilt Series.
The second artwork will include a community quilt that reflects icons and landmarks of the Burleson community. Once finished this quilt will be included in the City of Burleson’s interior collection.
quilting has a long history
The history of the American Barn Quilt can be traced back almost 300 YEars to the arrival of immigrants from the central regions of Europe; Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.
It is widely believed that barn painting/quilting originated in Pennsylvania with these immigrants and then spread too much of the New England and Midwestern states. Paint was very expensive in those days and painting a decorative yet distinctive quilt pattern on their barns was a wonderful way of allowing for decoration. It also became an excellent way for travelers to find particular families or cross roads, as towns people would just tell them which pattern to look for.
Paint became less costly around the 1830’s to 1840’s and at this point, barn painting/decorating became an actual trade with specialized artisans. These artists combined many folk designs as well as specific geometric patterns from quilt squares: Snail trail, Bear claw, Mariners compass and Drunkards path.
Decorating barns with colorful designs and quilt squares peaked by the beginning of the 20th century and slowly gave way to a more pragmatic form of barn painting; advertisement. Gone were the colorful quilts and in their place came the paid ads for Red Man Chewing Tobacco, Ceresota Flour, and Mail Pouch: A nostalgic part of the history of American barns in their own right.
Today, barn quilts have become popular again, with more and more becoming visible. Quilt trails have been developed in many states. After a number of barn quilts have been displayed in an area, a map is developed that guides the viewers to the location. The map will have an address, maybe a picture of the square and a name or explanation of its meaning. A few of the states that have developed quilt trails include: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa and of course, Michigan. The barn quilts can be put on any type of building; from houses, garages, and sheds to parks or yards where they are mounted on two posts and displayed.
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.
Quilting has a long and storied history stretching back as far as ancient Egypt, piecing together a timeline of humanity from which we draw our crafting skills.
While the quilting we know and love today is worlds different from the functional quilting of our past, it still holds a unique place in our hearts and in our history. For generations, we’ve warmed ourselves and our families beneath quilts. They’ve been there to protect us, remind us of our past, and comfort us in difficult times.
Today, quilting is more accessible than it ever has been. Quilting isn’t entirely a necessity as it once was, we can instead use it as a creative outlet and pastime thus making art quilts a new medium of expression.
The world of quilting continues to change as the world we live in evolves. Modern quilting utilizing bold color designs and prints, once an impossibility due to limited technology and supplies, has brightened the artform in unimaginable ways. Geometric and fractal quilting are growing in popularity as a new generation of quilters piece their first works, many of which have learned their craft online rather than through the traditional in-person learning process. As the world changes, so does quilting.
