As we head into autumn, our thoughts naturally turn toward gathering supplies necessary to keep warm during the pending winter that will soon follow. Wood is cut and split, vegetables are stored, and hay is stockpiled to winter over farm animals. For colonial women, bedding, in the form of coverlets and blankets, was also patched or repurposed during this time.
In modern times, our method of ‘making bedding’ comes from creating a quilt.
QUILT: a warm bed covering made of padding enclosed between layers of fabric and kept in place by lines of stitching, typically applied in decorative design.
It is a common thought that colonial women, pre-industrial revolution, made heirloom-quality and modern-type patterned quilts. Colonial women spent their days cooking, cleaning, spinning, weaving, and sewing. If their husband needed a hand in the fields or stores, they helped. Unfortunately, their busy lives did not leave time for cutting fabric scraps into squares and triangles to make heirloom quilts.
The blankets they stitched together came from well-worn clothing and old blankets. Blankets found their purpose as filler between two blankets. The goal was to keep their family warm.
Because colonial women lived mindfully toward necessity, this does not mean they did not value and enjoy color, prints, and styles. On the contrary, many creative types had a sense of color and design. What styles and patterns were available to colonial women?
Colonial Cotton
Until the mid-17th century, most fabrics were woven and sold to England by India. These fabrics were damasks, silks, and brocades. Cotton prints came from Calcutta under the name ‘Calico.’ “Besides the fineness of the weave, the wonderful colors and designs of the painted cotton cloth from India were much admired by Europeans.” (The American Quilt, Kiracofe 1993) English textile makers worked to compete with the Indian fabric imports. However, most English cotton was of poor quality. It was not until cotton from the colonies became a commonly traded import that they could compete. Colonial cotton could withstand the fabric-making process and became a competitor to Indian cotton.
Demand for printed fabrics was high in the colonies. In 1765, England shipped 90,616 yards of cloth to American merchants. However, only wealthy colonists could afford the materials. The invention of the roller printer in 1785 allowed beautiful fabrics to enter the homes of the middle and lower classes. Before the invention, “a four-color block print of fabric 50 yards long and 1 yard wide required 1,800 impressions of the blocks. A brilliant printer could complete the printing in about fifteen hours. The same design executed on the roller printer took about one-and-a-half minutes” (The American Quilt, Kiracofe 1993). Now that the middle and lower classes could afford the fabric, the creation of bedding became two-fold. It became an outlet for creativity and function.
Cylinder Printing
Cylinder printing was a method of printing patterns onto fabric. This technique became popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It involved using engraved copper rollers (cylinders) to transfer dye onto the fabric, allowing for the mass production of patterned textiles.
Here’s how it generally worked:
- Design Engraving: A design was engraved onto the surface of a copper roller. The design could be intricate, and the roller could be etched with multiple colors, each in a different section.
- Dye Application: The roller was coated with dye. Excess dye was scraped off, leaving dye only in the engraved areas.
- Fabric Printing: The fabric was then passed through the rollers. The pressure from the rollers transferred the dye from the engraved design onto the fabric.
This method allowed for more detailed and precise patterns than earlier methods like block printing. It also significantly increased production speed, making patterned fabrics more accessible and affordable. Roller printing became a dominant method in the textile industry for producing printed cotton and other fabrics during that time.
