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Unlike the other family quilts from this era which are made of repeated blocks, Narcissa's quilt was constructed in long strips of triangles, forming a zig-zag design. She used only two different fabrics —a solid dark red (similar to the red in Mary's Tulip) and a delicate print of five-pointed stars in red and brown superimposed over a pale-yellow grid printed on white. The stark contrast of the two fabrics and the large scale of the triangles results in a very bold quilt, perhaps not a style typically associated with a middle-aged, unmarried woman of the Victorian era. Like the quilts made by Rosa and her daughters, Narcissa's quilt was pieced by hand. She quilted it in parallel rows of stitches, following the angles of the zig-zag to form a "wave" design. She matched the color of the quilting thread to the fabric color, red thread on the red, and white thread on the light print.

Narcissa clearly had sufficient fabric to complete her quilt top without substitutions, but she exercised economy on the back where it was less visible. The backing fabric, a brown-and-yellow stripe, appears to have been reused from an earlier use. She sewed together three lengths of the twenty-five-inch-wide fabric, but that apparently proved insufficient. Along one long edge, a number of short pieces are joined to augment the width, and one of these has a small irregular patch, suggesting mending of some previous damage. The backing was still too short, as there are additional long narrow strips pieced in on both shorter ends. Narcissa chose new materials for the visible front of the quilt and recycled fabric for the generally unseen back. The juxtaposition of public and private faces in the quilt invokes the distinction between the formal parlor and the more humble sitting room of the Victorian home.

Published: 19 May 2006

© 2006 Laurel Horton and Southern Spaces