Quilt by Nellie Abram

The quilt I decided to analyze was the “Housetop” variation in the Sear’s Corduroy collection. I would describe this pattern as a form of a grid. There is a type of organized grip about the pattern, but at the same time it is not organized. You can clearly see that there are six different rectangle spots on the quilt, but not all of the rectangle spots are filled in. Some spots are outlined only and other spots are just a rectangle and no outline. I think the imagery used in this quilt could either be visual or touch. There are different layers on the quilt, which could be easily felt. But, there are also different patterns that could be easily seen. The quilt looks this way because of the techniques Nellie Abrams used to create it. She would use left over pieces of fabric from the Sears workshop to create quilts. She put color blocks against color blocks to create negative space and powerful positive. She only used three colors on this quilt, which caused a lot of contrast in it. After looking at all of the quilts made from extra Sears’s corduroy, I think the inspiration for all of them was creativity. The Freedom Quilting Bee had to follow a strict outline of what the pillowcases should look like for Sears. I think at the end of the day when all of the workers got the extra scraps they could finally do what they wanted and run free with their designs. Each quilt is so different, which shows everyone’s own design style. Nellie Abrams made this quilt to express her creativity.