The International Quilt Museum, University of Nebraska

Two-color quilts, particularly those made of red and white, were especially popular in the United States from 1875 through 1920. Their popularity was influenced by developments in synthetic dyes that made Turkey red fabrics more affordable and thus, much more available.

Turkey red dyeing was initially discovered in the 1700s in the Levant—the area of the eastern Mediterranean that was part of the Turkish empire. The dye was derived from the root of the madder plant, but required a complicated, labor-intensive process to extract the rich color. Turkey red was a popular, though expensive, fabric used in American quilts throughout the nineteenth century.

The discovery of a synthetic version of the dye in 1868 led the way for an explosion of red and white quilts in the late nineteenth century. The quilts were typically composed of solid red fabric in machine- pieced patterns.

Discover an incredible variety of works composed around the proposed contrast between red and white, all from the collection of the University of Nebraska’s International Quilt Museum, located in Lincoln, USA