Mountain Homespun

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Seams Like Old Times In the course of researching an exhibit project called Coverlets: New Threads in Old Patterns) to be sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts Folklife program, the Mountain Heritage Center staffborrowed about 40 old coverlets made between 1850 and 1930 in ten Western North Carolina counties. We began to notice that the coverlets, all made by piecing narrow strips together , had two kinds ofseams: matched and unmatched. As the stories ofthe coverlets unfolded, it appeared that those with matched seams (in which the motifs meet precisely across the seam, giving the illusion ofone piece ofcloth) were generally made after 1900 and that most of those known to have been made earlier were of the crooked-seam variety. The straight-seam ones turned out to be, not surprisingly, the work ofprofessional or semi-professional weavers , many of whom had some connection to the Penland School of Crafts at Penland, the John C. Campbell Folk School at Brasstown, or the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, headquartered in Asheville, all North Carolina institutions that grew out of the era of northern Protestant ameliorative work in Appalachia from the 1870S to the 1920S. Many of the local weavers also had some family tradition of weaving, which had been stimulated by the markets and refined by the craft teaching established by the "fotched-on" [Appalachian for "brought in"] women-the missionaries from the north. One of the standards insisted upon by the northern ladies was that the seams of a coverlet be straight. The most fascinating coverlet was the brown Double Bowknot now owned by the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, which is labeled "This is the coverlet that started the Allanstand Industries." Before it was a museum piece, it was used by Frances Goodrich to personify the continuity ofher handicraft revival; to raise funds for craft programs, schools and hospitals; to star in the most dramatic moment of Goodrich's Mountain Homespun; and to launch a business that, in a fashion, survives to this writing, five years short of a century old. Before Goodrich got it about 1895, it was a bedspread, probably greatly loved by an old mountain family because one of them made it completely herself. It is a crooked-seam coverlet made about 1850. In Wilson and Kennedy'S OfCoverlets and in old photographs like the one of MOUNTAIN HOMESPUN that wonderful Leatherwood family with straw hats, we began to notice that a coverlet was hung as a backdrop by many ofthe families for the important occasion ofbeing photographed-almost as ifit represented members ofthe family long gone. The families we talked to who had kept coverlets into the 1980s had no doubt that they symbolized the family in some ways. Besides the connections to the weaver of the past, there is something else familial about the old coverlets -perhaps their warmth and connection to the marriage bed. Coverlets were a common wedding gift, a favorite present to make for each of one's sons and daughters, and a special item in the long list ofkinds ofcloth made on mountain farmsteads. One old coverlet had been the first thing, after the people, to be rescued from a burning house. Before the handicraft revival ofthe 1890S, there were community weavers who took in spun wool and made it into coverlets, and there were also many families in which woven goods were neither bought nor sold, but produced solely for the family'S use. Overshot pattern weaving in the "double drafts," a demanding kind ofweaving, was probably done infrequently by family weavers, who were more often engaged in making plainer fabrics for clothing and other uses. To produce a straight-seam coverlet, the loom must be tight and accurate and the weaver must "beat" every shot ofthe weft with equal force. When the beat is weaker, the motifs are longer; when stronger, they are compacted. Someone who does not practice at the overshot weaving will likely be unable to make a matched-seam coverlet. Another reason offered for the crooked seams was that the old way ofwashing coverlets, in the cold water ofthe stream was easier if the seams were taken apart. Sometimes the strips were sewn back together in a different order so as to distribute the wear evenly. Still another technical answer for crooked seams resides in the nature of the loom. The old "barn" or "porch" looms were big, loose affairs on which it was difficult even for a skilled weaver to keep an even beat...