I went along to my first meeting of the Southampton Quilters last Thursday and they had a speaker, Diane Taylor, who came to talk about the Amish. The talk was interesting, although not very quilt-focused, and it made me interested to learn more about their quilts.
The first thing I've learnt from looking on the internet is that they are very popular - finding modern Amish quilts made to appeal to "English" people is a lot easier than finding examples of historic Amish quilts.
I have decided that I would like to make a small Amish-inspired quilt so I have been looking for more traditional designs which led me to the museum sites I have listed below, all of which have pictures of beautiful Amish quilts:
Development of Amish Quilting
Amish quilting started around the 1870's and whilst few quilts survive from this period the very first quilts are thought to have typically been whole-cloth quilts or had very simply pieced quilts with large blocks of muted colours - for example the centre diamond pattern appears quite frequently. Up until the 1920's quilts were no larger than 82" square.
As Amish quilting developed simple geometric designs started to emerge - typical early Amish quilt designs include Bars and Sunshine & Shadows. Other popular designs include Log cabin, Roman Stripe and Tumbling Boxes and star based designs.
Star based patterns were popular.
Amish quilters were not as isolated from "English" society as many may think and their designs tended to be drawn from "English" quilts although often they would simplify patterns down to make them less ostentatious and commonly Amish quilters would use larger blocks with less pieces than "English" quilts.
This webpage has an interesting comparison of Amish and English quilts from the collection of the Illinois State museum showcasing similarities and differences between the styles of quilting.
Amish quilt designs have tended to lag behind "English" quilting - one possible explanation for this is given by Eve Wheatcroft Granick, author of The Amish Quilt, who writes that "the inherently conservative nature of Amish culture permits change only in relationship to the larger outside society. What has been discarded by other American women as being out of fashion is then acceptable for possible adaptation in the Amish community"
Applique does not tend to feature in Amish quilts, most probably because of the prohibition about creating representational images which forms part of the Amish culture. For the same reason quilts do not show people or places but restrict themselves to geometric patterns.
Colours and Fabrics
Historically Amish quilts were made with woollen fabrics with pieced designs often being made from dressmaking remnants, though rarely from old clothing as this was simply too worn to be of use. Modern Amish quilts are often made of cotton but Amish quilters rarely use silks and the like.
Fabrics are solid, not patterned, and colours tend to be muted and from the cool side of the colour spectrum - deep blues, greens, purples and reds are common colours and yellow and orange are rarely seen.
Quilting
Amish quilting is done by hand and Amish quilters are famed for their tiny stitches - up to 12 stitches per inch! The entire top of the quilt tends to be very densely quilted, to secure the layers of the quilt through the woollen batting, and quilting patterns are traditionally either geometric (grids and straight lines) or inspired by nature (feathers, flowers, grapevines).
