A New Deal for Quilts

A New Deal for Quilts, by Janneken Smucker, was published in conjunction with an International Quilt Museum (IQM) exhibition held in Lincoln, Nebraska, between October 2023 and April 2024. The IQM exhibition, also titled A New Deal for Quilts, not only showcased the quilts of the 1930s, but also explored ways in which contemporary sewists responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Smucker compares the way that present-day sewists making masks during the COVID-19 lockdown positively contributed to their communities as did the New Deal quiltmakers. Both gave economic relief and political voice in uncertain times.Smucker is specifically interested in how President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies used the lens of quiltmaking to restore public confidence and create jobs. She analyzes US government-funded images to consider how the quilts and their makers were used as symbols of national values and progress. Smucker thoroughly clarifies Roosevelt's response to the Depression with policies and programs connected to home economics. In addition, she unpacks the political statements made through the art of quiltmaking during the years of the Great Depression.As a trained folklorist, compositionist, and quilter, I am fascinated by the use of quilts as visual rhetoric to tell the story of New Deal policies. Readers will recognize iconic images from pictorial journalists, such as Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee, who documented the 1930s. Smucker challenges the assumptions and stereotypes of rurality and scarcity that persist in generalized interpretations of Depression-era photos. The images of quilts and quiltmakers in the text add depth to the author's analyses by providing insight and perspective into the daily lives of women through these staged photos. Government New Deal advertisements used the imagery of quilts, sometimes even subtly in the background, to supply hope of home, beauty, and prosperity to struggling families.For the purposes of this book, the author focuses on programs in which government-trained women taught home economics to women who were then able to use new skills to help support their families. Smucker asserts that New Deal home economics programs did not always realize their intended outcomes. In practice, “systemic and individual racism resulted in relief programming that did not always reflect the equity the federal government espoused” (p. 102). Throughout the text, the author highlights the inequities Black American sewists and quilters experienced during the New Deal. Smucker identifies the paternalism of the home economists tasked with bringing relief to Black women: “The hierarchies inherent in the relationship of home economists providing instruction to those they deemed inferior, whether economically or racially, likely rubbed some clients the wrong way” (p. 129). The final clause in this quotation strikes me as an understatement. As the author points out, clients understandably felt discouraged when they were judged by those who came to support. Folklorists and quilt scholars continue to lean into and study how social and economic inequities among marginalized American quilters of this era impacted both individuals and their communities.Smucker documents the way quiltmakers used their quilts as political commentary on the events of their time. In a 1978 interview, reflecting on her 1932 quilt “Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner,” quiltmaker Fannie Shaw observed: “That ol’ Depression was something, but you know, I never saw so much loviness sic in this country” (p. 13). While Shaw had the means during the Depression years to create a quilt that scholars have deemed a masterpiece, her comment expresses her feelings of community. She sewed images of folks she knew onto her quilt to illustrate the mutual aid that neighbors provided to each other.I am keenly interested in quilters who use their art for political commentary. Like the author, my Instagram feed is also filled with quilters who use their quilts as political voice. Smucker drew a compelling comparison between the nation's reaction to the New Deal in the 1930s and the responses of both the US government and its citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic—a connection my students and I will continue to think and write about.According to Smucker, the photographs of Depression-era quilts “played a small role” in the entirety of the New Deal of the 1930s (p. 213). However, the book's images depicting women in communities richly connected to quiltmaking strongly illustrate the benefits of quilt studies for folklorists and scholars. In the waning weeks of 2024, the curated photos in A New Deal for Quilts and the fortitude shown by women during two stressful events in our country's history add “loviness” (to quote Fanny Shaw) during our current uncertain times.