History of Tin Stencils for Quilting
Born of the necessity to keep warm and make use of available fabric scraps, quilts are now considered beautiful works of art. Have you ever admired a beautiful hand-crafted quilt and wondered where the design came from? Walk into any quilting supply store today and you can find plastic patterns for appliques, quilt pieces and stitching designs. But before plastic became available, one material widely used for patterns was tin.
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History
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Today, quilting stores carry beautiful fabrics and pre-cut kits that allow the home quilter to create stunning quilts. Colonial quilters fashioned their quilts from scraps. Crazy quilts were made from randomly cut pieces of material. Other designs required the use of a pattern.
Early quilt patterns were made of paper. These were not very durable, however. Quilters looking for sturdier patterns turned to tin. Sheet tin was cut into shapes to serve as patterns in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many of these tin templates have survived and have been displayed in the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Winterthur, Delaware.
Applique and Patchwork Pieces
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Quilters used tin stencils to make patterns for applique quilts. Unlike a patchwork quilt, in which pieces of fabric are sewn together to form the quilt top, an applique quilt has fabric shapes sewn on top of a base fabric. Quilters cut their applique patterns from sheet tin.
Tin was also used to make patterns for the quilt pieces in patchwork quilts. Colonial American historian Alice Morse Earle wrote in 1898 of cutting patterns for a "Job's Trouble" quilt out of tin. Quilters had to make their own patterns from tin or paper until commercial patterns became widespread in the 1930s.
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Stitching Patterns
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Many quilters take more pride in their quilting stitches than in their piecework. One-fabric quilts are a popular way to display intricate stitching techniques.
Wooden and tin stencils were used in the early 19th century to mark quilts for stitching. The stencils would be dusted with powder that was then transferred to the quilt to mark a stitching line. The quilter would stitch along the lines on the fabric to create intricate patterns.
Signature Quilts
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Signature quilts were popular in the middle of the 19th century. These were fabric versions of autograph books, which were popular at the time. Many people preferred to use metal stencils rather than signing their own names. Today, many quilters simply create labels for this purpose. Quilt historians may have difficulty discerning which names are stenciled and which are autographs.
Significance
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Tin stencils have been replaced by plastic as the material of choice for quilt patterns. Plastic stencils are cheap and easy to produce commercially. They are also very durable.
Many quilters, however, still use tin stencils. Some have been handed down through families for generations and are used because of their nostalgic qualities. Metal cookie cutters are also used in the same manner as tin stencils for a new twist on an old craft.
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References
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Anne Norman
