For an assignment in a class called “Colonizing Girlhoods: L.M. Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilder,” the professor took us to the Special Collections department of the college library to look at books and artifacts associated with the Little House and Anne of Green Gables series, such as spinoffs, older editions, paper dolls, alphabet books, guidebooks for tours, blurbs, illustrations, and dust jacket copy. She asked us to deliver a five-minute informal class presentation and write up our findings about anything in these materials that might affect and add to our understanding of the main texts. What a fun assignment!

I looked at the phenomenon of instructions for Little House fans who want to make quilts as Laura did. I found that the experience of making four small quilts for this assignment, as opposed to simply reading the instructions, did affect the way I read the main texts.

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There are three mentions of quilts by name in the Little House series.

In Little House in the Big Woods: “Mary could not sew on her nine-patch quilt” (Wilder, Big Woods 84). Nine-patch blocks are three rows of three patches each, usually squares of equal size (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Nine-patch quilt, 2024. I chose prints, such as the rich autumn floral of the shadow blocks, that reminded me of the dresses that Laura’s mother and aunts wore to the sugaring dance in Little House in the Big Woods.

In On the Banks of Plum Creek: “Laura started a bear’s-track quilt. It was harder than a nine-patch, because there were bias seams, very hard to make smooth. Every seam must be exactly right before Ma would let her make another, and often Laura worked several days on one short seam” (Wilder, Plum Creek 296). Bear’s-track blocks consist of squares, rectangles, and half-square right triangles (Fig. 2). They are a step up in complexity from nine-patch blocks.

Fig. 2: Bear’s-track quilt, 2024. The focus prints are lawns from Liberty of London. The claw points are batik-dyed poplin. The background fabric is unbleached muslin, and the quilt is backed in calico.

In These Happy Golden Years, when Laura is packing her wedding trunk to set up housekeeping as a married woman: “Laura brought her Dove-in-the-Window quilt that she had pieced as a little girl while Mary pieced a nine-patch. It had been kept carefully all the years since then” (Wilder, Golden Years 274).

Several blocks are known by the name Dove-in-the-Window, including versions that are similar or identical to the one known as bear’s-track. The convention of naming quilt blocks did not become widespread in the U.S. until the mid-1880s, years after Laura and Mary were children. For her books, Laura Ingalls Wilder was assigning block names to her childhood quilts that she would not have used at the time she pieced them in the 1870s (Halpin, Wedding Quilt 1). We don’t know which block pattern was in Laura’s wedding quilt, which was destroyed in the house fire the Wilders suffered early in their marriage.

At the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum in Burr Oak, Iowa, visitors can see a complex Dove-in-the-Window block that Laura attempted unsuccessfully to piece as an adult. Based on this exhibit, quilt historian Linda Halpin concluded that this version must have been the one Laura pieced as a small child, as well. Halpin has done extensive work on Wilder and quilts: she is the author of Quilting with Laura, and when Andover Fabrics released a line of quilting calicos in 2015-6 based on the Little House series, Halpin was commissioned to create sample quilts highlighting these fabrics for trade shows (Halpin, “Little House on the Prairie Fabrics”). So I ordered Linda Halpin’s licensed pattern for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Wedding Quilt and tried piecing a block.

I soon gave up in frustration after finding this pattern to be a bias-seam nightmare. Because of the level of difficulty, I think it more likely that seven-year-old Laura pieced one of the simpler Dove-in-the-Window versions that are similar or identical to bear’s-track (Fig. 3). Because the text identifies the wedding quilt as being one that Laura pieced while Mary pieced a nine-patch, I think it is more likely still that author Laura Ingalls Wilder used the two pattern names interchangeably to refer to the same quilt.

Fig. 3: Dove-in-the-Window quilt, 2024. The block pattern is similar to bear’s-track.

Like Linda Halpin, I also learned to quilt because of the Little House books. For me, as a child of Korean immigrants, there was a racial component. These books romanticized Americana for me and served as an instruction manual. If I did the things Laura did, I could be an American girl. I also studied quilts in women’s literature from books such as Sister’s Choice by Elaine Showalter. The title comes from a quilt in The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

But I never imagined seeing my Asian-ness in the Little House world until I read Linda Sue Park’s Prairie Lotus, about a half-white, quarter-Chinese, quarter-Korean girl named Hanna who travels east to De Smet from California, by covered wagon, and becomes friends with a character named Bess, which was Almanzo Wilder’s real-life nickname for Laura Ingalls Wilder. Hanna is a seamstress, too, with a box full of buttons from her mother. I started a Button Box quilt to honor that book (Fig. 4), which was published March 3, 2020. You know what happened next. That quilt stayed half-finished for five months, draped over a chair, while I converted my quilting calico stash into masks to donate to health care workers and Black Lives Matter protesters. I sewed every day from 7 AM until midnight, frantically doing my part to stave off mass death. I did think of Laura twisting hay in The Long Winter.

Fig. 4: Button Box quilt, 2020. Inspired by Linda Sue Park’s Prairie Lotus.

It was actually a relief not to see Asian-ness depicted in the Little House books. Considering the portrayals of Black and Native people in the books, I got off easy. The effects of invisibility are not always bad.

What do we do when we love books, but we know the author is bigoted?

One response is cancellation, like the 2018 response to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s racism when the American Library Association voted to remove her name from what is now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award (Association for Library Service to Children).

Another is transformative work. That’s the strategy I chose when Elaine Showalter and Alice Walker, who had taught me to honor the Sister’s Choice quilt block, dismayed me with public displays of bigotry. In 2019, Showalter posted gratuitous anti-Asian racism toward Marie Kondo on Twitter. In 2023, Alice Walker posted on her website in support of J.K. Rowling’s transphobic statements. I didn’t want Showalter and Walker to replace my love for the Sister’s Choice block with their negative associations. I decided to update the block name to Sibling’s Choice and use it in a quilt with trans rights colors (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Sibling’s Choice quilt, 2024.

That’s when physically making quilts, as Laura did, instead of just reading about them, helped me understand some of the larger questions of this course: What role does nostalgia play in these books? What can material culture teach me about these texts that I can’t get from reading alone?

Piecing the Sibling’s Choice quilt helped me understand why the Little House books revere Pa, despite everything. Why some books retain a nostalgic pull on readers despite their bigotry. There’s a level of emotion between writer and reader about survival in the face of danger. As I sewed to deal with feeling angry and threatened about the political climate, the making of this quilt meant something to me. It was about creating something material that’s both comforting and defiant in the face of danger, because if we don’t protect ourselves and our loved ones, nobody else will. We have to do something with our fears. These are stories people want to tell the world later, to marvel:

Look what we survived. After danger, whenever there was comfort or at least survival, there was gratitude, and gratitude makes nostalgia. Let me tell you about the people who went through it with me. Let me show you what we made to keep each other warm and safe.

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WORKS CITED

Association for Library Service to Children. “Wilder’s Legacy, and the Award in Context.” ALA, www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/clla/name_change_context. Accessed 6 April 2024.

Halpin, Linda. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Wedding Quilt. Lindahalpin.com, 2017.

Halpin, Linda. “Little House on the Prairie Fabrics.” www.lindahalpin.com/lauraingallswilder.html. Accessed 6 April 2024.

Park, Linda Sue. Prairie Lotus. Clarion Books, 2020.

Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing. Oxford University Press, 1991.

Stubblebine, Alison. “Wow, people are really comfortable offering up racist criticisms of ‘Marie Kondo.’” Nylon, www.nylon.com/marie-kondo-racist-criticism, 4 Feb 2019. Accessed 6 April 2024.

Walker, Alice. “They’re trying to burn the WRONG Witch.” Alice Walker: The Official Website, alicewalkersgarden.com/2023/03/theyre-trying-to-burn-the-wrong-witch-the-witch-trials-of-j-k-rowling-redacted-news/. Accessed 6 April 2024.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls, and Garth Williams. Little House in the Big Woods. Harper Trophy, 1971.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls, and Garth Williams. On the Banks of Plum Creek. Harper Trophy, 1971. Wilder, Laura Ingalls, and Garth Williams. These Happy Golden Years. HarperTrophy, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.