Jennie Hazen Lewis and the Great Quilting Debate of 1870: Part 1
Jennie Throws Down the Gauntlet
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Release Date: May 5, 2026
Jennie Throws Down the Gauntlet
On February 10, 1870, readers of The Western Rural opened their weekly paper to find that Mrs. Jennie Hazen Lewis had some opinions about their bedquilts. Strong ones.
“Does it pay to cut bits of calico in still smaller bits, and sew them together to make bedquilts?” she wrote. “I take the negative of this question.”
What followed was a gleeful evisceration of the entire enterprise of patchwork quilting, told through the cautionary tale of a neighbor woman who’d spent three months piecing a Peony quilt from newly purchased fabric – white muslin, red and green calicoes – then hired a girl to help her quilt it over six weeks. The result?
“Simply a red, white and green abomination! There was no beauty in it. There was no warmth in it. It soiled easily. It was difficult to wash.”
The quilt was laid away in the blue chest, brought out only “to feast the envious eyes of visitors.”
But the real trouble started when the quilt’s owner failed to invite her neighbors to help quilt it. Mortally offended, the women of the neighborhood – “that is for two miles around” – set themselves to work producing something “more hideous still” than the famous Peony quilt. They succeeded admirably. And they all made quiltings from which the owner of the obnoxious quilt was religiously excluded.
At these revenge quilting bees, over “wonderful suppers and very strong tea”, the neighbors picked apart more than seams:
Mrs. Pop had examined the quilt “clus” and found the leaves were not all of a size. Mrs. Tinkham observed a good many stitches that were set crooked. Mrs. Twist had seen several spots that looked like candle grease. Louisa Hunt presumed they quilted on it by candlelight, “so’s to not give anybody a chance to see it.” And Susan Clark declared it a perfect botch, “not nigh as purty” as the one they’d been working on – and if she lived till next Summer, she would show them a quilt that would make their mouths water.
“It was to be probably, a musk melon quilt,” Jennie added dryly.
As for what readers should do with their old dress skirts? They didn’t have any, Jennie insisted – hadn’t they said a year ago they’d formed them all into carpet rags in response to a column she’d written on that very same topic?
But if somehow they did have some left, she advised making comfortables instead:
“Don’t cut them up into Herring Bone or Cross-cut Saws patterns. Use whole skirts for each side. Tie them with strong twine rather than quilting them, maybe add tufts of bright colored yarn. Never put less than four pounds of batting into one.” 1
It was practical advice delivered with characteristic tartness. Jennie Hazen Lewis wrote a regular column for The Western Rural, a Chicago-based agricultural paper with subscribers scattered across the rural Midwest. She covered everything from housekeeping economies to rag carpets to the proper way to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey. Her readers knew her voice – opinionated, witty, unafraid of controversy.
But this time, Jennie had poked a hornet’s nest.
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The first response to the quilting gauntlet Jennie had thrown down appeared three weeks later, on March 3. The writer didn’t give her name, signing only as “Mrs. L.A.U.” from Fox River, Wisconsin. But her credentials were clear from the opening line:
“Having been a practical housewife for 33 years, and constantly studying the best means of bringing about the greatest results, it is my candid opinion that such work does pay.”
Mrs. L.A.U. had just completed a “Job’s Trouble” quilt pieced from small, bright bits of worsted, “some not larger than the palm of your hand, all saved up myself, or given me by friends.” She’d done the work for amusement while sick and unable to do heavy sewing, and it had pleased her very much.
As for Jennie’s advice about tying rather than quilting comfortables? Wrong. They’ll soon pull to pieces if tacked. Mrs. L.A.U. always quilted hers. They lasted twice as long.
And those neighborhood quarrels Jennie described? “We have no ladies in this community that would get offended at not being invited to a quilting, when no one else was asked.”
The letter concluded with a pointed warning: “I do not wish my young friends to be misled in the matter by Mrs. Lewis’ repeated assertions that such things do not pay.” 2
Mrs. L.A.U. wasn’t the only one who had thoughts.
By March 10, the paper was running multiple responses under the heading “Patch-Work Quilts – Replies to Mrs. Lewis.”
Lizzie H. got right to the point: “It is my opinion that Jennie had no invitation to the quilting, the reason she was so ruffled.”
She’d never known any such neighborhood quarrels as Jennie described, never heard such talk at a quilting. And what, exactly, was Jennie proposing to do with scraps of calico left from dresses and aprons? “Hold! Perhaps she does not wear calico – and I suppose she would say put them in the rag-bag. But I say no! Cut them out and make a nice nine patch, or some easily pieced quilt of them, and teach our little girls to sew.”
The question of little girls became a recurring theme. It was, many readers insisted, a nice employment that kept “their little hands out of mischief many a time.” Children liked to see the different pieces of calico sewed together. “I love to do it with their little hands,” Lizzie wrote.
“I have heard some say they would rather do nothing than make a patch-work quilt, and judge Jennie is one of those from her talk. I would a great deal rather make patch quilts than sit and hold my hands idle in my lap.” 3
From Erie, Kansas, Mrs. S.B.C. agreed it would be foolish to buy new fabric to piece into fancy quilts like Peony or Rising Sun or Wreath of Roses. But wasn’t it a good plan to piece quilts from the bits of new calico that accumulated where there was a family of small children? And wasn’t it a good way to teach the little ones to sew?
A simple nine-patch or Irish chain, where the blocks were all composed of small squares pieced together, looked very well on a bed. Especially in a new country where beds sat in rooms where the family stayed. You needed something to cover the comforters or they’d soon be soiled. White spreads soiled very easily, and a patchwork quilt was warmer and not much harder to wash.
As for old dress skirts? Mrs. S.B.C. had her own thoughts about Jennie’s assumptions:
“When I am through wearing mine they are not fit for carpet rags, to say nothing of trying to get an apron out of one. Of all the dresses I have worn out in the last three years, not enough could have been picked out and pieced together to make half of one side of a comforter.” 4
Not everyone who wrote in had children to consider. Some had a more philosophical objection to Jennie’s position.
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“Magga, the Farmer’s Wife” admitted she didn’t know if she would have written to the paper at all “if it hadn’t been for that letter on patch-work quilts that Jennie wrote.” Baby called it the “Cugle paper,” and the whole family looked for it each week.
But Jennie’s argument just didn’t hold up:
“If some families that I know would have their girls stay at home a little more and make scrap quilts, it would be better for themselves and their neighbors, too.”
And then came the zinger:
“I think Jennie can’t have any children, and has never had to cut clothes for little ones, or she would think different.” 5
It wasn’t just about the children, though. It was about the work itself, and what counted as worthy labor.
C. Wood agreed with Jennie that patchwork quilts were neither economical nor in good taste. “Farmers’ wives have little enough spare time at the most,” she wrote, “and any woman who desires to have an intelligent and well-formed mind will prefer to spend her leisure hours in trying to get wisdom, instead of wasting them in making patchwork quilts.” 6
A clean white spread on the outside covering of a bed looked nicer and was in better taste than all the patchwork quilts in existence.
Her conclusion:
“Improve your time in reading good books and papers, and cultivating your intellect instead of making patchwork quilts.”
But M.B.H. from Rantoul, Illinois, had been piecing quilts for 35 years and had some thoughts about the virtue of mental cultivation versus the reality of women’s labor. 7
“Woman’s work is very monotonous, and often seems almost profitless, so little does it bring except home comfort,” M.B.H. wrote. “To work hard all the week and only get a dollar and a half or two dollars when a man gets so much or more per day, makes us feel as though it matters not much if we do spend our time in some way that is a little foolish.”
She confessed she’d often felt she’d almost wasted her time “after toiling and sweating all the forenoon preparing a good dinner; men sat down and in 15 minutes my forenoon’s work had vanished like snow before the sun, and with weary head and weary feet the afternoon must pass much as did the forenoon.”
C. Wood said one thing truly farmers’ wives had little enough leisure for mental improvement. But M.B.H. would “much rather piece quilts, good dark ones with not a piece of white, not even white lining, than wash white spreads.”
Where they burned coal it soon told on white spreads. She preferred to have something that wouldn’t show even specks of dust and wouldn’t have to be washed every two or three weeks, even if it didn’t come up to modern style.
“A bed in a nice room dressed in white looks pure and sweet and nice. I admire it,” she wrote. “But to say white alone looks well, I think is on the same principle of blacksmiths, farmers, and all, wearing white shirts because they look well on doctors, merchants, and those who have less to soil them.”
Colored shirts had been a Godsend to women. “I know just how hard it is to wash white shirts for harvest hands, threshers, etc., and when I see a very dirty shirt I can but pity the washerwoman.”
M.B.H. had made her first quilt in 1858 – black alpaca and blue delaine pieced in a simple nine-patch, alpaca for large squares, quilted in a wreath. It got many compliments. She’d worn it outside, most exposed to dust and wear, until 1868. When the lining and outside began to wear out, she’d taken an old traveling dress for new lining, pieced it into strips with merino, alpaca, and delaine left from another old quilt between them, added cotton where most worn, and quilted it again.
That quilt had been on her lounge ever since. It still showed little wear beyond some soiling.
The message was clear: these weren’t just bedcovers. They were investments, carefully managed over decades by women who knew exactly what their labor was worth – and what wasn’t worth the extra washing.
Young Housekeeper from Woodhull, Illinois, had a more pointed question for C. Wood and her advocacy of white spreads:
“I would like to ask C. Wood how she would keep spreads clean where there are farmers and threshers to sleep in the beds. I suppose she would say, have them put on clean shirts at night. Very well, but who ever saw threshers that were at that trouble (as they say)? I never did, and I have lived on a farm a great many years.”
She didn’t think it took as much time to piece quilts as it did to wash spreads and keep them clean. And she was sure a dirty spread didn’t look very well.
“I do not think there is anything nicer than flannel pieced into a quilt (or comfortable) and lined with the same. If farmers’ wives get their work done in the morning, they will have plenty of time for reading, as well as for piecing quilts, or anything else that they would like to do.” 8
The class tensions were becoming impossible to ignore. White spreads belonged to women whose husbands wore white shirts to work, whose beds stayed in separate bedrooms, whose houses didn’t fill with coal dust or the grime of harvest season. For everyone else, the quilt-versus-spread debate was about something more fundamental than taste or mental improvement.
It was about survival.
By late April, even the undecided were weighing in.
“Aunt Sally” from Lawton, Michigan, admitted to being puzzled. One week after reading articles in favor of patchwork, she’d take up scissors and thimble, thinking she’d make a nice quilt of some intricate, unheard-of design that would take the premium at the next exhibit. But the next week, upon reading about the immaculate purity and neatness of white spreads, she’d hesitate.
“I should be in that case like the Dutch Judge who said he could make up his mind very well when he heard one side of the argument, but when he heard both, it ‘bothered’ him.”
Her humble opinion?
“We can have neat patch-work quilts and white counterpanes, too.”
If it was a waste of time to make quilts, it was a greater waste to throw away or sell for two or three cents a pound all the remnants of new chintz or calico that accumulated in most families. And if they were to be sewed together, it showed no little skill and handiwork to put them in some form that pleased the eye and made them a thing of beauty.
Many elderly ladies who didn’t feel able to work on anything requiring great strength could pass many pleasant hours at this employment. And many a little girl’s fingers could be just as usefully employed forming designs out of bits of calico as in that common way of spending time—crocheting.
Aunt Sally’s two daughters had each pieced two or three quilts when quite young, employed their time when out of school and when not needed for something else. “They have them now as mementoes of their friends, as well as of industrious childhood.”
Her advice to farmers’ wives and all other wives:
“Save whatever is worth saving—odds and ends of everything, time included. Put everything where it can be of some use either to yourself or to someone else, and where, too, it will do the greatest amount of good.” 9
Mrs. Pansey arrived in late May as self-appointed “judge and jury” between Jennie and her critics. She had theories about why Jennie held such strong opinions.
Perhaps Jennie had a mother like Mrs. Pansey’s own, “who considered scrap quilts next in importance to a question of morality, and tied her down, or shut her up in a hogshead until the required amount of patch-work was finished.” If that was the case, no wonder she looked back and concluded that scrap quilts didn’t pay.
Or perhaps Jennie possessed “that genuine sympathy with children, that dreads to see a prematurely old look on their otherwise sweet faces” – a look children always wore who’d finished a nine-patch quilt before they were six or seven years old. Mrs. Pansey had heard mammas boast of this, and thought while looking at such a grandmother of a little girl:
“You had better have had her out making mud pies.” 10
But Mrs. Pansey also had some words for the pro-quilt faction. Young ladies of industrious habits and finished education might employ themselves very pleasantly piecing quilts, “but don’t set children at it; their dolls’ dresses are enough for them.”
And if you cut clothing economically, few pieces remained. “It is not necessary to buy a quarter of a yard more than you need to make a garment. Buy enough, none too much, nothing lacking.”
Then came the question that cut to the heart of the matter:
“You wouldn’t let your little girls wear patches? Very well, I could dispense with quilts first.”
By mid-May, the controversy had grown large enough that M.B.H. felt compelled to write again, this time to defend patchwork as something more than economy or education.
“Patch-work was one of the pet occupations of my childhood,” she wrote. “To have deprived me of that would have been to rob me of the sweetest recreations. Play of every kind was tame beside this. My only trouble was lack of calicoes to work with. I never had toys, but the few calicoes I had given me were more precious to me than toys are to our children.” 11
She’d commenced piecing quilts when she was just five years old and had some patchwork on hand ever since. Thirty-five years of experience hadn’t convinced her of the folly of it.
“I contend that whatever makes us happy, if not pernicious in any of its tendencies, makes us better.”
She didn’t make a medley by putting silk, flannel, delaine, and calico in a jumble together – she pieced silks by themselves, and so of each kind. She had some quilts of which she thought she was justly proud.
“If someone who has no pet occupation on which to spend her leisure thinks it a waste of time, I have simply to say I enjoy it so much, and when weary of other duties, it is such a source of pleasure you will surely allow me to go on with it.”
The debate had evolved beyond economics and housekeeping. It had become a question of what made life bearable, what small pleasures women could claim for themselves in the grinding routine of domestic labor.
Through February, March, April, and May, the letters kept coming. The Western Rural‘s readers were clearly invested in this question – not just whether patchwork quilts “paid,” but what women’s work was worth, what counted as improvement, whether beauty and memory had value that couldn’t be measured in dollars and washing time.
The controversy had taken on a life of its own. The editor joked about “undecided housekeepers” being “sadly puzzled to know what to do in the case.” One reader compared herself to the Dutch Judge, bothered by hearing both sides.
And through it all, Jennie Hazen Lewis – the woman who’d started this war with her gleeful evisceration of the Peony quilt and its feuding admirers – remained silent.
She’d lit the fuse in February and watched it burn through spring. She’d been accused of not wearing calico, of not having children, of being too ruffled about not getting invited to a quilting. She’d been defended by C. Wood and criticized by nearly everyone else.
But she hadn’t responded. Hadn’t clarified. Hadn’t doubled down or backed off.
The readers of The Western Rural waited to see what Jennie Hazen Lewis would do next.
They wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
Copyright 2026 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
1 Jennie Hazen Lewis, “Patch-Work Quilt”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, February 10, 1870, P. 3.
2 Mrs. Jennie Hazen Lewis, “A Housewife’s Opinion”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, March 3, 1870, P. 3.
3 “Patch-Work Quilts – Replies to Mrs. Lewis”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, March 10, 1870, P. 3.
4 “Patch-Work Quilts and Old Dress Skirts”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, March 24, 1870, P. 3.
5 “Domestic Economies”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, March 10, 1870, P. 3.
6 “Patch-Work Quilts and Mental Cultivation”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, March 31, 1870, P. 3.
7 “A Plea for Patch-Work”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, May 12, 1870, P. 3.
8 “Patch-work Quilts – working Men”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, May 5, 1870, P. 3.
9 “Patch-work Quilts – A Ghost Raised”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, April 28, 1870, P. 3.
10 “Patch-work Quilts – Judge and Jury”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, May 26, 1870, P. 3.
11 “A Plea for Patch-Work”, The Western Rural, Chicago, IL, May 12, 1870, P. 3.
As a patchwork quilter of many decades I was drawn to this story. I think my hackles would be raised if this Jenny was writing in my era. No wonder she was excluded from the sewing circles. Quilting (with any type of fabric) is still big business in Australia and we have many UFOs ( unfinished objects) in our stash.
Fascinating. I have friends who quilt using new fabric and the end result is lovely, but my 100-year-old friend uses leftover scraps and may never finish but is happy to have something to occupy her, now that most other activities are beyond her.