Quilts and Grief - Bereavement Quilts

by Steffani McChesney

September has been a hard month. My eighteen-year-old cat who traveled the world with my husband and me died September 5th and then September 11th followed. I did what a lot of women down through the eons have done. I cried and quilted.

Quilting has always offered comfort to grieving women. In colonial and pioneer days, death was an ever-present shadow. Women died in childbirth. Childhood was a hazardous journey. Rare was the family that didn’t lose at least one child to the grim reaper. Quilts were used to wrap the deceased and drape the coffin. Sometimes they were used to bury the deceased because there was no coffin available.

Quilts were stitched during the nineteenth century in memory of soldiers lost in battle. There have even been quilts made during deathwatches embellished with symbols of mourning such as acorns for immortality, laurel leaves for eternity and roses for the frailty of life.

During the Victorian Era deceased children were sometimes photographed holding a favorite toy as if asleep under a beloved family quilt. We think that practice a little macabre but that might be the only photograph the family had to remember the child.

Memory quilts provided comfort to families as a way to preserve something that belonged to a deceased family member. Quilts were made that contained cloth from the person’s clothing. Album quilts were made for family members to write inscriptions to and about the deceased. These quilts became treasured family heirlooms.

Quilts have not only comforted families, they have also comforted a nation in times of crises and tragedy. During the Civil War women on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line made quilts in memory of lost soldiers. Quilts were made for fundraising for various wartime needs. And quilts were made to cover the sick and wounded soldiers in hospitals and prisons. Jane Stickle made her famous Dear Jane quilt during the Civil War. She signed it “In War Time.”

The Great Depression spawned a renaissance and a distinctive style in quilt making. These quilts were both useful and a source of comfort to the maker. The pastel colors and attractive patterns brought pleasure to the makers and the users, perhaps taking their minds off their troubles for a little while.

Quilters all over America have responded to September 11, 2001 in the time-honored fashion of our forebears. Many thousands of quilts have been made in the last year to be given to the children of the victims of 9/11. Fabric companies have rushed to produced thousands of bolts of patriotic fabric to fill the need for quilters to express their pain and sorrow in the form they know best…quilting. Making quilts in the face of tragedy helps us cope with the pain, but it also expresses our hope for the future. It takes time to make a quilt. We want the future to understand how we felt and to be comforted too.