The
Quilt That Walked to Golden
Winner of the Independent Publishers Assn. Benjamin Franklin Award
Take a journey back in time and across America’s prairies. Preserving
a unique slice of the history of the American West, Sandra Dallas recreates
the arduous westward trail for women settling the emerging mining and
farm communities of Colorado Territory.
A master storyteller, Dallas captures the spirit of adventure and drive
for survival of America’s pioneer women, who often recorded their
lives in the quilts and personal documents they left behind. Heart-rending
accounts of life and death on the Overland Trail include stories of mothers
who lovingly wrapped their children in quilts as burial shrouds. Little-known
journals record the day-to-day trials of frontier women, who sometimes
relied on their skills with a sewing needle to help scratch out a living.
Letters home tell of sewing and quilting circles that provided momentary
release from the isolation of remote farms and mining camps.
As the land became settled, sewing bees fueled a growing sense of community.
With increased availability of “fancy goods”--thread, store-bough
fabrics, and quilt patterns—women quilted for comfort, and sewing
bees became anxiously awaited social events. As time passed, Dallas tells,
quilting helped women cope through the difficult days of Depression-era
America.
After a decline in needlework following World War II, women rediscovered
quilting during America’s celebration of its Bicentennial (and Colorado’s
Centennial.) Revealing that quilts and quilting traditions serve as an
unbroken thread between past and present, Dallas tells how today, thousands
of Colorado women—and some men—quilt for pleasure and for
artistic expression.
The Quilt That Walked To Golden is beautifully illustrated
with colorful quilts from the collection of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.
Wonderful vintage photographs of early Colorado and of women quilting, along
with contemporary photos by Povy Kendal Atchison, bring the rich needlework
traditions of the American West to life. As a special bonus for quilters,
the book includes four complete patterns for traditional quilts.
Read an excerpt from this book >>
Author’s
Note
Shortly after I became a director of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum
in Golden, Colorado, I asked the board president why there was no
quilt book on Colorado. After all, many other states had them. She
fired back, “Why don’t you write one?” I agreed
to do that, figuring the project would take only a few months, because
I would use the museum’s archives. Then I found out the museum
had no archives. No problem. I could do my research at the Western
History Dept. of the Denver Public Library and the Colorado Historical
Society, which were within walking distance of my home. But they had
only a dozen or so listings under quilts. Still undaunted, I decided
to use my own library, because over the years, I’d collected
hundreds of books about western women. Then I discovered those books
must have been indexed by men, because only a handful had the word
quilt in their indexes. I went through the books page by page, looking
for quilting and sewing references. That turned out to be a good thing,
however, because almost all of the research in The Quilt That
Walked To Golden is original to quilt history. The most exciting
reference was personal. My mother died shortly after I started the
book, and among her effects was a journal she’d kept as a young
woman. She writes about the summer she spent on my Dad’s family
farm at Harveyville, Kansas, where as a young bride, she became a
member of her mother-in-law’s sewing circle. (My folks’
summer in Harveyville inspired my novel The Persian Pickle
Club.) Because The Quilt That Walked To Golden goes beyond Colorado, I was able to include Mom’s diary excerpts. |
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