Woven Into The Wool

Monte Harris is convinced that even in the mid-1800s, there were easier ways to cover a bed than to make a coverlet for it.

“It was a domestic art,” said Harris, education coordinator for the Rogers Historical Museum. “They enjoyed the experience of making something beautiful.”

A coverlet, she explained, required spinning thread - oftentimes even raising sheep for wool or growing flax for linen - dying that thread with natural dyes like indigo, and then, on a giant loom, weaving that thread into fabric. The looms, often built by the artisans’ husbands, were so big that “loom rooms” were common.

“You can tell how big the loom was by how wide the strips are for the coverlet,” Harris said.

Creating the pattern in the fabric requiring an intricate configuration of thread, of course. Harris said modern instructions, shared with her by the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild, look like “some kind of primitive computer programming - or like a musical chart with lines and numbers inside the lines. It must have taken hours just to thread the loom!”

Harris will talk about seven coverlets and their creators in “Arkansas Ladies of the Loom,” set for 10 a.m. Thursday at the Bella Vista Library. The program was created by Harris in 2007 and “continues to be a favorite,” she said. It’s a rare chance to hear about four of the coverlets, which are privately owned. Three are part of the museum collection, she adds, and all of them have tales to tell.

“I love historical artifacts,” she said with a chuckle, “but I particularly love the stories behind them.”

There’s the secret message encoded in the red-and-white coverlet created by Elizabeth Greaves Dickson Woods, for example. She was the granddaughter of Gen. Joseph Dickson, a soldier who fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War, and came to Benton County in 1832.

“You have to remember that it was not polite in those days for women to discuss politics in public, but we have found that they had an opinion,” Harris said. “We should not be surprised by that!”

The women, she said, spoke out in the patterns of their coverlets and quilts, like Woods’ “Whig Rose,” an expression of support for the Whig Party.

“Dozens, if not hundreds, of pattern names tell us much about the political persuasions of these ladies,” Harris said.

The tale of two other coverlets illustrates how precious they were. Created by the women of the Samuel and Polly Ruddick family, who lived just north of the Pea Ridge battlefield, the coverlets were buried in the barn to preserve them.

“They had to pack up and leave when it became clear there was going to be a battle,” Harris said. “You hear stories about people burying their gold or their silver, but they also buried other valued possessions - like these coverlets.”

When the family was able to return home, they found the coverlets undamaged by the fires that were part of the battle, Harris said.

“One was later trimmed into pieces so various family members could have it, but the other one - a deep indigo blue and white - is still completely intact,” she marvels. “And colorwise, they could have been made yesterday!”