Charm Quilts

by Steffani McChesney

I have always liked that name. It’s, well, you know, charming, conjuring up all kinds of images and meanings. There are other not so “charming” names for these scrap quilts in which no two fabrics could match. Because of the nature of the quilt it was sometimes called a Beggar Quilt. The quilt maker had to “beg” fabric from all her friends and relatives to get the variety needed to assemble the top. Charm quilts were also referred to as Odd Fellers because of the need to have no two fabrics alike.

There was one instance where the no-two-fabrics-alike rule was broken. Mothers would sometimes make a charm quilt where there was one matching pair of fabrics used. A bedridden child recuperating from an illness could relieve boredom by looking for the matching pair. Quite a feat in a large bed quilt made of two or three inch pieces of multicolored fabric.

Charm quilts were (and still are) usually made of only one patch shape. This puts them into the family of one-patch quilts. The shapes were most often squares or triangles. Sometimes an Elongated Hexagon, Apple Core, Thimble, or Honeycomb was used. Actually, any shape that fitted together to make a top could be used.

Charm quilts first became popular in the Victorian age using the dark, rich fabrics popular at the time. Many were made out of the same fabrics as Crazy quilts, but not richly embellished. There was a resurgence of interest in the 1920s using brighter fabrics. The look became more ordered as the quilt makers began to sort the scraps to create a pattern of light and dark across the quilt top. Obtaining a large collection of different fabrics became easier because scrap bags from garment factories and charm squares became commercially available.

Renewed interest in Charm quilts began with the Y2K celebrations at the turn of the century. Millennium quilts made of fabric collected over the Internet, through magazine ads or the old fashioned way, from friends and relatives, inspired many quilt makers.

These Millennium quilts are usually marked with a long, informative label and, often, signed as in friendship or album quilts to aid future quilt historians in studying their historic significance. There was even a special display of twenty-four Millennium quilts at the Houston Quilt Festival in November 2002. If you are interested in more information on Millennium quilts go to this website for links to lots of information and pictures: Betty Reynolds' Millennium Charm Quilt Project It’s worth a look. And very charming.