The friendship quilt

Names in indelible ink

The International Quilt Museum traces friendship quilts to the early 1840s, when members of social groups signed their names in indelible ink, sometimes with phrases such as ‘remember me’, or inked them with carved stamps. The first fashion centred on Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Jersey and had faded there by the mid-1850s, though it lasted longer further north, west and south. In Philadelphia, Rebecca Scattergood Savery, from a Quaker family, is linked to three friendship quilts made in a group and marked with 175 names and a series of inked drawings; the International Quilt Museum holds a star quilt by her dated 1844.

To verify: The Smithsonian’s record of Hannah C. Nicholson’s album quilt, dated 1843, which we could not open; Whether the 1844 star quilt by Rebecca Savery in the International Quilt Museum is one of her signed friendship quilts

A keepsake for someone leaving

Such quilts tied a community together, sometimes marking a marriage or a friend’s moving away, and many travelled west with their owners in the 19th century. When a sister or friend was about to leave on a long trip or move far away, women sometimes made signature album quilts as keepsakes. Friends and relatives made the blocks of Mary Van Pelt’s album quilt, probably made in Maryland between 1849 and 1854 and now in the International Quilt Museum; her sister wrote on one: ‘My sister, my sweet sister / No tears but tenderness to ever miss me / Go where I will to me thou art the same’.

To verify: The American Folk Art Museum’s record of its Friendship Star quilt, Philadelphia, 1844, linked to the Savery and Cresson families, which we could not open

Many hands

The custom returned in the 1880s and 1890s, now usually with embroidered names; later makers stitched their names onto blocks pre-stamped with embroidery designs, and some Old Order Amish and Mennonite makers added their mailing addresses. Around 1945, young women visiting Pinecraft, Florida, embroidered their names and home communities into one now in the International Quilt Museum, which calls the friendship quilt a favourite gift today among friends, classmates, relatives and co-workers. Wishlore editorial note: a friendship quilt is the work of many hands, and its names belong to the families who made it. We tell its story and do not copy any signed quilt; our drawing shows a single star block with a pen line that is not a real name.