On this day in 1824, American poet and author Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, then a rural town north of Boston. Larcom’s autobiography, A New England Girlhood (1889), is about the age of industrialization and her role in it as a textile mill worker – beginning at age eleven. Here is an excerpt from her poem “Weaving:”

So up and down before her loom
She paces on, and to and fro,
Till sunset fills the dusty room,
And makes the water redly glow,
As if the Merrimack’s calm flood
Were changed into a stream of blood

Jenny Jones of Spray, North Carolina made this Brick pattern quilt for her mother in 1915 using samples from the Spray woolen mill. The edges of the pieces are all pinked (from a sample book) and briar stitched together to the backing fabric. The quilt was documented by it’s owner in 1985 as part of the North Carolina Quilt Project.

View this quilt on The Quilt Index to find out! Read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt.

Source:
http://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/lucy-larcom/

Posted by Amy E. Milne
Executive Director, Quilt Alliance
amy.milne@quiltalliance.org