‘Hidden In Plain View’ Next Historical Society Program

Women in the colonial and early republic eras of our history were largely excluded from the arts. One of the ways women found to participate in the arts was through overlaps with their recognized domestic roles such as the needle arts.

Newtown Historical Society will look at one facet of these efforts in a presentation on quilts and quilting, “Hidden in Plain View,” on Monday, February 13, at 7:30 pm. The program will be presented by Martha Bishop and Mary Ferri in the community room of C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street.

Quilting has a long history, probably as long as women have plied the needle. While many normally think of a quilt as a bed cover, the technique of joining two fabrics with an insulating layer in-between was used for clothing as well. Back in the days of armored knights riding to rescue damsels, a quilted garment was worn under the armor to protect the skin from the chafing and pinching of the metal suit.

Certainly, when people lived in porous cottages, sleeping on rope beds or perhaps no bed at all, quilts were necessary household articles. All articles of bedding were homemade, from the straw- or corn husk-stuffed mattress to the sheets to the bedcovers for warmth. Women would save scraps of cloth to be used for quilt tops, and would often create wonderful patterned designs, in addition to the well-known crazy quilt of more or less randomly sewn scraps.

Alone or in a social setting, they would sew the quilt tops together, and then match them to bottoms, stuff with batting, and attach the layers together. Often, feed sacks and other post-use fabrics were recycled as quilt bottoms, and sometimes even as tops.

Patterns for quilts were myriad, and tended to develop regional styles. The well known subgenre of album quilts were made as a kind of textile scrapbook, with each square being signed by its maker, then sewn into a quilt that was often given as a remembrance to a family leaving the area.  Symbolism in quilt design is an often controversial subject, and many older traditions concerning symbolic use of quilts have been debunked.

A novel about a woman who made a signal quilt during the American Civil War led Mrs Bishop to research the use of quilts as signals to help escaping slaves during that way. She discovered that this was not a generally accepted truth but that in other societies quilts had been used to send messages.

Mrs Bishop, who was named Bethel’s Teacher of the Year in 2005, has retired as a library/media specialist at Bethel Middle School. She is a member of the American Quilter’s Society. In addition to her interest in quilts, she is a storyteller, a member of the Connecticut Storytelling Center, and has led “ghost walks” in Danbury.

Mary Ferri is director of religious education at St Mary’s Church in Bethel, and an active volunteer with Bethel Historical Society. She has been quilting for more than 20 years, and has a great knowledge of the history of quilting in this country.

All Newtown Historical Society programs are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served following the presentation.

For further information, call the historical society at 203-426-5937.