How to Date Quilts by Style

How to Date Quilts by Style

Whether you sell, buy, study or collect, the age of a quilt is important to know.

The style of a quilt is the first thing you see when you view a quilt, whether online, in a antique shop or booth, on exhibit or in an auction. A quilt’s fabric is hard to date from a distance, but the style jumps right out at you and gets the dating process under way quickly. Using the Quick Guide alone or with Fabric ID and swatch books will quickly point you to a good estimate of the era in which your quilt was made.

Dating quilts with accuracy includes examination of many parts of the quilts, but the process starts with one aspect and goes from there. For me, the style is usually the first place I start. I weigh other characteristics against the era the style suggests as I go through the various aspects of determining the circa date a quilt was made.

Provenance is not always reliable, even when given in good faith, or when written on an old scrap of paper attached to the quilt with a pin by a relative.

These educational charts are easy to use and include details of the most common styles found in an era not every single style found in an era. A style is listed for the time span in which it was most commonly made, not all the years it was made. The Guides are condensed and therefore abbreviations are used.

Aren’t Style and Pattern the Same Thing?

The style and pattern name for a quilt are not the same thing. A style is a classification, i.e. a whole- cloth quilt, a charm quilt, a utility quilt or a cut-out chintz appliqué quilt with the broderie perse stitch.

As always, there are some exceptions to this; when the block pattern name is also the name of the style. The Lone Star quilt, also called the Star of Bethlehem, is one example. The name difference is regional, but both depict the pattern name and the style. There is no other quilt style exactly like it. The corner motifs may change over time, and the way it is made changes, but the finished look of one large star made from rows of diamond shaped pieces, set into or appliquéd on top of a slightly larger square background is the same through time.

In the 20th century, it was more common to name a quilt's style using its pattern's name. For example, three of the most common quilt styles made between 1900 and 1950 were Sunbonnet Sue, Grandmother’s Flower Garden, and Double Wedding Ring. GFG would have been called the mosaic or honeycomb style if it were made early in the 19th century. The quilt style may be referred to as either when the quilt is made in the 19th century using primarily hexagon shaped pieces. However today the style is also referred to as a One-Patch Hexagon and if each fabric piece is made from a different fabric, it would be called a Charm Quilt. So, names change for a style, and GFG is a 20th century name for an 18 & 19th century style.

With this in mind, when you see or read about a hexagon quilt, if it is described as a GFG or as a mosaic or honeycomb, you will now know what era the quilt is from. This helps when viewing an auction description, a dealer’s sales tag, or reading quilt history!

Reproducing Antique Quilts

Use the styles listed by year to design the appropriate style for the time-period and fabrics you have chosen to reproduce. The fabric manufacturer often prints the time-period on the selvedge.

Teach Yourself to Date Quilts

There are many wonderful books on the market filled with photos of quilts and of fabrics. Using the guide with the photos will help you make associations in time and design to aid in learning how to recognize a quilt’s style easily and quickly on your own.

Memorizing using pictures in books or magazines, or quilts themselves is much easier when you can also see in a chart forming a timeline where the style falls in quilt history. When you read across the row, you see how the style changed over time or ceased to be commonly made. When reading down a time period’s column descriptions of the most common quilts styles in that era are apparent.

Next - Places to Use the Guides