Laura Wheeler Encourages Thrift

While many design companies published and sold mail order quilt patterns through newspaper columns, Laura Wheeler patterns were particularly popular because they encouraged the use of scraps and creative thrift, acknowledging that making a quilt an economical way was desirable. These regularly occurring features promoted the purchase of complex contemporary quilt patterns, while still being firmly enmeshed in belt-tightening  consumer culture of the 1930s. Wheeler’s columns always ended by urging readers to “send ten cents in stamps of coin (coin preferred) for this pattern” allowing readers to mail order the physical pattern. But as quilt scholar Merikay Waldvogel observes, “readers could easily make quilts from the illustrated pattern that showed several blocks and gave the reader a good idea of the overall effect of the quilt.”[1] A 1937 column featuring one of Laura Wheeler’s pattern was titled, “Here’s Thrift,” showing an appliqué pattern it referred to as a “scrap quilt.”[2] Another Laura Wheeler design from July 1937 urged quiltmakers, “Into the scrap-bag you must go to take your pick of the most colorful pieces for this lovely quilt. … An economy quilt indeed and one you’ll be proud to own!”[3] A pattern called “Pride of the North” was called “colorful and economical” while the feature’s title demanded “Get out your scraps.”[4] Although the copy for Laura Wheeler patterns did not typically make direct connections to colonial foremothers, the one featuring the pattern called “Grandmother’s Pride” stated “The very quilt that grandmother herself might have pieced! The chances are your cotton scraps are even gayer than those she used, which will make this scrap quilt an unusually gay one for you and your friends to make.”[5] The text accompanying a pattern that Wheeler called “Friendship Fan”—predominantly a twentieth century pattern rather than a colonial or nineteenth century one—explicityly linked to colonial romance, reading, “Handed down from colonial days, the Friendship Fan, made of scraps continues all its old-time popularity.”[6]  In the quilt patterns published through the 1930s, the values perceived to be embedded in the act of quiltmaking—even if based on the myth of colonial era quilts—thrived.

[1] Merikay Waldvogel, Soft Covers for Hard Times: Quiltmaking and the Great Depression (Nashville, Tenn: Rutledge Hill, 1990), 16; According to Barbara Brackman, Laura Wheeler patterns were published and marketed by a New York City company called Needlecraft Service and appeared in dozens of newspapers beginning in 1932. Wheeler was a fictional name, and the actual pattern designer remains unknown. “Laura Wheeler Patterns,” Material Culture, August 30, 2009. According to research conducted by Wilene Smith, the Laura Wheeler quilt feature was syndicated by King Features Syndicate, a division of the Hearst Corporation. See Wilene Smith, “Laura Wheeler and Alice Brooks,” Quilt History Tidbits — Old & Newly Discovered, January 6, 2015.

[2] “Here’s Thrift–Scottie Quilt in Easy Laura Wheeler Applique,” The Daily Independent. (Elizabeth City, N.C.), June 30, 1937.

[3] “Scrap-Bag Yield Makes Lovely Laura Wheeler Piece Quilt,” The Daily Independent. (Elizabeth City, N.C.), July 17, 1937.

[4] “Be Gay–Get Out Your Scraps for This Laura Wheeler Quilt,” The Daily Independent, May 17, 1937.

[5] “A Scrap Quilt by Laura Wheeler Glows with Room-Filling Beauty,” The Daily Independent, January 5, 1937.

[6] “This Laura Wheeler Quilt Is Economical to Make,” n.d.