Dakota County quilt exhibit celebrates women's right to vote

Jeanette Root's grandmothers were young farm wives in 1920, when women won the right to vote. The two Minnesota women, lifelong friends, had a lot in common, but not when it came to casting ballots.

"Grandma Kate never missed her chance to vote. Grandma Nettie only voted when my grandpa told her who to vote for," said Root, 87. "I was named for Grandma Nettie, but I got Grandma Kate's genes when it comes to voting. I consider it my duty."

Now Root has immortalized her grandmothers in a quilt that includes their silhouettes.

It's one of 36 quilts hanging in the Lawshe Memorial Museum, operated by the Dakota County Historical Society. On display through April 3, "Women's Right to Vote: Revolution and Evolution" includes original pieces by women across the country who answered the challenge to mark the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment.

"An exhibit like this is the kind of important recognition that has been denied to quilters in the past," said Jean McElvain, associate curator at the Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota. "In general, women's handwork that was done in the home has been minimized and not recognized as a fine art form."

Some quilt squares are traditional blocks pieced in purple, yellow and white, the colors adopted by the American suffrage movement. Others are contemporary textile art with images of flags, ballots, stitched words and patchworks of images of women at polling places. Several feature inspiring quotes or pictures of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other bold suffragettes who led the fight for the vote.

"Seeing them can break your heart," said Cindy Thury Smith, a member of the Dakota County Star Quilters, the guild that sponsored the challenge. "So many women worked long and hard, but were dead before the 19th Amendment was ratified and they never got the chance to vote themselves."

"I thought about how hypocritical it was that women were not good enough to vote, yet as mothers they were entrusted with the most important job of all," she said. "They didn't want us to have the power, but we have the greatest power."

Some quilters produced their entries using classic techniques, while others turned to their computerized sewing machines and inkjet fabric printers to augment their creations.

"We wanted them to use their creativity and see where it would take them," said Smith. "We gave them a lot of leeway. The only rule was no glitter. It gets everywhere and you can't get it off."

Quilts have long been a platform for causes championed by women.

"Women told personal stories using pieces of fabric from family garments, but when you dig a little you see this was how they said, 'This is who I am, this is what I believe,' " said Laura Nagle, an Eagan quilt historian.

During the Civil War, Northern women stitched a quarter-million soldiers' quilts to Army specifications, sized to function as bedrolls and, when necessary, as shrouds for battlefield burials. In the South, donated "gunboat quilts" paid for munitions and medicine for the Confederacy.

Later, as the temperance movement gained ground, quilts were used in the campaign for the prohibition of alcohol.

"At that time, women had no rights and couldn't own property. If they wanted out of an abusive marriage, they couldn't take their children. If they worked, their husbands got their paycheck. Men could drink their money away," Nagle said. "Quilts left the beds and became the banners of social change."

But the pattern broke with the cause of women's suffrage, which was not promoted with quilts.

"Suffragettes made a conscious choice not to use quilts for fundraising. They thought that reinforced the stereotype that women stitch and stay home. That was not the image they wanted," Nagle explained. "By this time women were more mobile. They used petitions, pamphlets and speeches for their campaign."

In 1881, 14 women met in the county seat of Hastings to form the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association.

And it was in South St. Paul, the very community where the suffrage quilt show now is hanging, where women cast the first ballots after the Constitution was amended to allow them to vote.

"There just happened to be a municipal water bond election in South St. Paul the day after the 19th Amendment was signed into law. Early that morning, 90 women lined up to vote," said Matt Carter, executive director of the Dakota County Historical Society. "It's a big claim for the county to make, it was national news. "

One hundred years later, the collection of newly stitched suffrage quilts is in high demand. After the show closes at the Lawshe Memorial Museum, the 36 quilts will be rolled up and shipped to a series of exhibit halls across the country where organizers hope they will inspire others.

"We take our rights for granted, but I'm 65 and my grandmother, a woman I knew, remembered when she couldn't vote," said Beth Kobliska of Inver Grove Heights, who created two quilts hanging in the show.

Kevyn Burger is a Minneapolis-based freelance broadcaster and writer.