Southern Quilts

In the 18th century, textiles were the most common import in Charleston, the largest southern port in America. Despite the availability of these materials, trade routes leading inland to the piedmont of the Carolinas and Georgia were undeveloped and travel was slow. Many in the rural South relied on locally grown flax and cotton to produce household textiles.

The cotton-based economy of the pre-Civil War South connected the textile work of enslaved Africans and free white women. While men traditionally worked as textile artists in many West African countries, Southern plantation owners adhered to a European system of labor division. Thus, African women became the principle weavers in the American South. Traditional African design sensibilities, like the use of bright colors and improvisation, combined with European pattern aesthetics to create distinctly American quilting traditions.

Quilt designs and colors are influenced by individual makers, popular trends, and available fabrics. Whether using imported materials, material scraps from the family home, or domestically produced fibers, quilts are intimately connected to the maker’s social, cultural, and economic environment.