Sunbonnet Sue - An Archive Of Wholesome Femininity, and Inspiration For a Feminist Uprising Among Crafters
After delving into the log cabin pattern of my Antelope Canyon quilt last week, I was excited to discover more about the archived cultural and historical moments embedded in my other quilts.
This week I have also been hard at work applying my research of quilt making, and have started on the process of attempting to archive my own narrative through quilting. I am not a very precise person by nature, but I am trying to carefully follow all the steps that I have outlined through my research. Follow the progress of my first quilt journey by heading to my Product Page!
Background:
This week's quilt is my oldest quilt, handed down to me from my Grandmother. The design is a series of frames around bonnet-clad little girls holding flowers. There are several areas where the fabric has started to disintegrate on this quilt, but I keep it for sentimental reasons. This is another example of quilt as archive - in this case, a memory of family, heritage, and a very special woman with an affinity for thrifting, friendships and crafting. I have always thought of this quilt as my 'Dutch Girl' quilt, as my Grandmother was from Holland, and the blue and white remind me of traditional Delft Blau pottery which has been handed down through the family. I would estimate that this quilt was made in the early 1900's, but probably came to my family a little later, as my Grandmother immigrated to Canada in the 1950’s.
Hand Stitched
Edge of Quilt:
No Binding
Something of Interest:
Appliquéd Skirts, Hand Embroidered Details
Pattern:
After some research, I was able to identify this quilt as a ‘Sunbonnet Sue’ pattern. This pattern was popularized on children’s quilts in the early 1900s, inspired by a book illustrated by Bertha Corbett Melcher in 1900. The book was called ‘Sunbonnet Babies’, and was so popular it led to Melcher being hired to do illustrations for a series of reading primers.
Sunbonnet Sue quickly became an icon with her wholesome stories of everyday life. Over 1 million copies of the Sunbonnet Babies Primer was sold and used across the Midwestern United States in the early 1900’s. Soon the image of this sweet bonnet-clad girl was the subject of cards, dishes, embroidery patterns and quilts – a trail blazing female franchise!
The popularity of Sunbonnet Sue shows us that she represents a version of how young women were viewed in the early 1900’s. In ‘Feminist messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture’ Linda Pershing suggests that the Sunbonnet Sue imagery has raised questions regarding the symbolism behind the ‘facelessness and anonymity of the female child’. Sunbonnet Sue encapsulates the prim - and exceptionally good - female child ‘being seen and not heard’ – an idiom found in many novels of the day, including Laura Ingalls’s Little House on the Prairie, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
In the 1970’s began an irreverent feminist quilt protest of this wholesome female image. Many women used quilt blocks to ‘kill’ Sue, or created variations of the Sunbonnet Sue pattern which hilariously have been dubbed ‘Scandalous Sue’, ‘Sinbonnet Sue’ or ‘Bad Sue’…Sue ‘peeking’ out from her bonnet, Sue kissing ‘Fisherman Fred’, Pregnant Sue in a wedding dress…you get the picture. Some crafty crafters even repurpose old Sunbonnet Sue quilts to turn them BAD – see an example of a block from one below:
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