The First American Woman Quilt

Did you know that in 1901 Annie E. Walker was the first American woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Or, that Elizabeth Blackwell was the first American woman to earn a medical degree—in 1849? Marci Hainkel learned about these women and others as she researched for her First American Woman Quilt.

About the Quilter

A crazy quilter for 30 years, Marci was inspired to make her First American Woman Quilt while completing Barbara Brackman’s Grandmother’s Choice Sampler in 2012. Brackman presented the blocks weekly on her Material Culture blog, and in each post featured an activist who fought for women’s rights. Marci made the blocks but took things a step further also making companion blocks with photo transfers of the featured suffragettes surrounded with crazy patchwork.

Marci said, “I enjoyed learning about the women. My own grandmother was in the first group of female streetcar conductors in Kansas City, so I felt a special connection to the project.” Each week she looked up a new woman to learn more. One story lead to another, and she knew before completing the Grandmother’s Choice Sampler that her next quilt would feature American women firsts.

Selecting the Right Fabric

The grey tones of the photo transfers helped establish the red, black and grey color scheme for the project. Marci created a list of women and started collecting novelty fabrics to help tell their stories. Often the novelty fabrics determined whether a woman was showcased in the quilt. The first American woman to be the director of a major corporation (Lettie Pate Whitehead, 1934) was included when Marci found a perfect piece of Coca-Cola® fabric.

A print with a woman on a bicycle earned a block for Annie Londonberry, the first American woman to bicycle around the world (1894-95). And a print with tiny playing cards sent Marci on a search to find Helen Sobel Smith, who, in 1995, was the first American woman inducted into the Bridge Hall of Fame.

Sometimes matching women with fabric was more challenging. The blocks finish 6” x 8” with a fair amount of space filled with the photo, so scale was important. Quilting friends took an interest in the project and volunteered for shopping trips, seeking fabrics featuring astronauts, runners, constellations, and fighter jets, to name a few. One friend let Marci cut a waterfall out of the center of her fat quarter. Another hand painted the red flames for Deann Schulman’s block (first American woman Smoke Jumper, 1981).

Making a Cut

A gift of a grey collage style print of historic Washington, DC, buildings was eliminated because the buildings were too large. Marci was especially disappointed because she had several woman firsts from America’s capital to include, and aside from the scale the fabric was perfect. The solution came in a suggestion to make a photo copy of the fabric reducing the scale and reprinting it on photo transfer fabric. The only other novelty fabric that was custom printed was an image of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In the Grandmother’s Choice Suffragette quilt, Marci embellished all of the blocks with the feather stitch. The First American Woman Quilt is a veritable library of stitches with each block different and no stitches repeated. Pearl cotton, embroidery floss, silk ribbon, and other fancy threads were used in the stitching. If they met the color criteria, laces and trims were considered fair game.

In some cases, such as the tooth on Lucy Hobbs Taylor’s block (first American woman to graduate from dental school, 1866), or the horse on Diane Crump’s block (first American woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby, 1971) a touch of embroidery, a charm, button, bauble, or other embellishment completes the story.

Marci’s hardest task was choosing the last block—she still had so many interesting women on her list. It was her daughter who suggested she put her own picture on the final block. Only one block has received additional embellishment after the quilt was completed: Sarah Thomas, the first American woman to referee in the NFL (2015), received an annotation after Marci saw her blow her whistle on TV in January 2019. That’s when Sarah Thomas became the first American woman to referee a playoff game.

About the Author

Barbara Eikmeier is a fabric designer, quilt designer, instructor, and host of the Block-by-Block: Quilting our Patchwork Legacy video series available on Quilting Daily TV. What firsts for American women inspire you? Have you ever created any quilts with particular women in mind? We want to hear from you! Share with us on Instagram, Facebook, or in the comments section below.