How Depression-Era Quiltmakers Constructed Domestic Space: An Interracial Processual Study

Abstract

In this article, I examine how quiltmaking contributed to the construction of home environments in the 1920s to 1940s. Drawing from oral history interviews with descendants of six black and two white quiltmakers, I argue that these low- and middle-income women enhanced their authority in the family and ordered domestic space through routine practices of making quilts primarily for everyday use. I posit the prominent spacetaking quality of quiltmaking as key to its effectiveness for these purposes. Thus emphasizing the process rather than product side of material culture studies, I argue that the capacity of quiltmaking to shape how inhabitants experience a household has been a significant factor in its long-term popularity in the United States.