Quilts of the 19th and 20th Centuries

A thrifty way to make use of leftover fabric, at a time when fabric could be scarce and expensive, quilts soon took on aesthetic and social dimensions in the hands of their makers in every region of America. Ingenuity, abstract invention, and the traces of changing American technology are revealed in the quilts handed down through families and displayed in museums today.

Picturing America has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom.
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