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Signature Quilt
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Signature Quilt |
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Clay County has had an interesting past in which different cultural groups
have interacted. Through something as simple as a Quilt, we were
able to uncover a town's multicultural past. It was the town of Hawley ,
Minnesota that held this interesting past. Just by glancing over the
names one the Quilt you can clearly see the diversity in it. This quilt is called a Signature Quilt. it was
made in 1899 by Louisa Jones. The pattern used is called the
"chimney sweep." The colors in this Quilt are red, tan, and
white. Each block contains signatures of people in the community in and
around the town of Hawley. Each signature is signed with pencil, then
stitched over with embroidered thread.
The connections between the signatures in each block have remained unclear. Some of the blocks are only of relatives, others seem to just have random people in each block.The purpose of this Signature quilt could be two things: Given as a gift to be used or hung and preserved, or was made to make money from people paying to have their names on the quilt. We have used this quilt to highlight the multicultural past of the Hawley community. |