America's Quilting History

There is something about a friendship quilt that touches our heart. Seeing those names from the past we wonder about these people and what their lives were like. Linda Otto Lipsett wondered too and that wondering became this book. In "Remember Me", she tells the stories of seven women and their friendship quilts. Displayed the women's stories are beautiful pictures of their quilts as well as great old photographs of the women and their times. In order to write their stories Lipsett interviewed numerous relatives and others who remembered these woman.

Before we immerse ourselves in the women's stories we are given a good background on Friendship Quilts. We learn how these quilts developed and the many variations of how these quilts were made. We discover that even the development of inks affected how Friendship quilts could be made.

Through the stories in this book we become aware of what it was like to be a woman in by gone years. We follow Betsy's struggles to support her children after her husband died at Andersonville prison during the Civil War. We are saddened as Lucy's health dwindles away because of her inconsolable grief after her husband was killed in the same war. We are struck by the contrast between Ellen's happy sociable life in Vermont before her marriage and her intense loneliness living in an isolated cabin in Wisconsin after marriage. Sara's years of fifteen pregnancies, losing two children at birth and four more in childhood, seem incredibly harsh to us. But there were successes for these women too, the work was hard but their love and pride in their families sustained them.

This is a book that would be fascinating to any quilter but it would also be a wonderful gift for any women interested in women's history and in learning more about women of the past.

© 2001 Anne Johnson (Do not reproduce any material from this site without permission.)