What were those Maine girls up to?
Letter from an 11-year-old to the Maine Farmer
Tecumseh, Nebraska, 1883
Dorcas Society quilting at the Kate Douglas Wiggin House in Hollis, Maine
Searching through old newspapers for Magic Quilt brings up many references, many from Maine.
Like this one, the earliest I've found from the summer of 1870.
Fortunately we get a description of Josie Belle's patch-work---it's what we might call a Charm Quilt.
And that makes sense---charms and magic.
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No two alike
April, 1870 Rutland, Vermont
In Vermont they used the term Charm Quilt. These New England stitchers seem to be the leaders in the fashion for charm quilts, whether of 999 pieces of more. The key is the idea that no two pieces are alike.
Fiction syndicated in 1881
Charm Quilt, 1880-1920, American Folk Art Museum
Jinny Beyer called these quilts to our attention in her 1985 book The Scrap Look.
Ellsworth, Maine
1884 fair results, Lewiston, Maine
1280 diamond squares by Carrie Ryerson
And apparently the shape didn't have to be a square.
Crib quilt
Advice from the Maine Farmer's readers
The fashion for charm quilts with an abundance of different prints spread throughout the country in the 1870-1920 period and into the mid-20th-century although few achieved the goal of "No-two-alike."
Maine Memory Network
Lewiston, Maine was home to many mills.
It's interesting that the style appeared in New England with its print cotton mills. One would expect to see fewer in the Southern states where the mills specialized in woven pattern and solid cottons.
Massachusetts Project & the Quilt Index
Anna Swain Coffin, Nantucket
1872 Lewiston, Maine, Journal
But as wholesalers began distributing "quilt bundles" and other packages of factory cutaway cottons through the mail the quiltmaker's proximity to a fabric mill was no longer a necessity.
1935, Bangor, Maine
Iowa Project & the Quilt Index
Emma Long Pisel, Johnson County, Iowa
One might guess these magic quilts with their variety of materials were a direct response to the factory systems of the late-19th-century.