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
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.
