Introduction
The Old State House Museum's African American quilt collection is unique for the number and variety of its family quilts. Quilts made by mothers and daughters, sisters, twins, cousins, and three generations from one family are a part of this remarkable assemblage of quilts constructed by black Arkansans. Their family quilts, dated circa 1890 to the present, are representative of almost the entire twentieth century of black quiltmaking in agrarian regions of southern Arkansas. These family quilts have been closely examined for what they reveal about the transmittal of quiltmaking styles and techniques within the family structures. Whether individual creativity consistently took precedence over inherited family customs of quiltmaking was a question requiring extensive investigation. Other relevant factors, such as the age of the quiltmaker when a bedcover was made, and a comparative analysis of her other quilts made at different times, needed probing. Conducting a parallel comparative study of a quilter's kinfolk's quiltworks was also an important component of the research of family quilts.
These groupings of African American quilts reflect a strong tradition practiced in rural areas of Arkansas where the quilters lived. Quilts were deemed a household necessity. Although Arkansas lies within the temperate zone, warm bedding was required for the unheated, drafty, and ofttimes chilly sleeping areas that farm families had to endure. Homemade bedcovers and feather tick mattresses and pillows provided insulation against the cold. Materials for making the quilts were most often scraps of fabric pieced together to form the top. Salvageable pieces of fabrics cut from worn-out clothing, such as men's pants or jeans, were made into heavy, warm "britches" quilts. The interlining or filler was recycled worn blankets or an old no-longer-usable quilt that could be recovered or "field scraps" of cotton. Brown or white domestic, feed sacks, and occasionally pieced strips of cloth provided the lining. Some quilts were tied; others were quilted. Several quilt designs appear to have been especially favored by black Arkansans, such as variations of the Log Cabin, Trip Around the World, and the string quilt. The family quilts in the collection exhibit a wide range of deferent patterns. It is, however, the interpretations of the quilt designs by black Arkansas quilters that is so captivating.
Mothers fashioned quilts and taught their children, including at times their sons, to also make quilts. When the children became adults and continued the process of parent-quiltmakers teaching their offspring the craft, it became a generation-to generation procedure.
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