Women Like Me : Network for Newcomers

Causes and Effects

Quilts have always been social documents about a time, a place and lives lived. In North America each group of European pioneer immigrants brought their quilting style and patterns with them. The history of each group's movements across the new continent can be traced in the patterns used in different regions.

Quilts and causes have always been linked. Women who could not make their voices heard directly used their group skills to influence current events and social issues.

Quilts raised money for the Abolitionist cause and women hung quilts outside their homes to indicate a safe house along the Underground Railroad. Many of these quilts featured the log cabin pattern made popular by the fact that President Lincoln was born in a log cabin.

During both World Wars women quilted for the cause and after the war thousands of quilts were sent to war ravaged Europe by women's groups. In the first Gulf War women soldiers made quilt pieces in the down times at the front lines for a sense of community and home.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union raised money by making quilts in its colours of blue and white. Many campaigns for women's rights in Canada started at these Quilting Bees.

The fifties love affair with the Industrial Age made many hand crafts fall out of favor but with the hippie back to the earth sensibilities of the sixties and seventies respect for quilting and quilting history made a big comeback.

In the eighties the cause most closely associated with a quilt was Aids. The Aids Quilt with 42,960 panels commemorating individual lives harkens back to the signature and mourning quilts of a century and a half before.

Today quilts are used in school projects to teach children mathematical principles and in history projects to give students pride in their place in the world.

While women donate their time and skills to many causes they also quilt to support themselves. A magnificent project created by Breast Cancer survivor Carolyn Miller of Stratford Ontario auctions quilts to raises funds to provide emotional and physical support for breast cancer survivors, their family and friends. The project takes the comfort of the quilt across Canada. www.thequilt.com