Quilt fragment

Description

This quilt block consists of four square patches pieced together. The patches are made of two different printed wool patterns, and the whole block is bound around the edges with brown silk. The square is quilted with a centered four-petal design. A paper label stitched diagonally to one corner reads “the first delaine that ever came into Lowell [Massachusetts,] 1830.” It is not clear whether these delaines were ever part of a larger quilt or were put together in this manner in order to preserve them. Alternatively, this may have been intended to be a quilted pot holder. This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.