History
The advent of the sewing machine led to an idea known as a “quilting machine,” which made its debut in 1871.
The first quilting frame and machine consisted only of two bars that allowed the user to move the quilt and the frame beneath the machine to quilt straight, parallel lines on the fabric. By roughly 1877, the design had been modified, and began to look similar to the design quilters now know as a longarm quilting machine.
Before electricity, the operator used a hand crank to move the machine along the rails and over the fabric.
Almost 30 years later, the designs and patents for quilting machines had changed drastically.
While the Depression era caused a decrease in the interest in sewing machines and an increase in hand sewing, the quilting machine still managed to take on new and exciting designs. During the past 20 years the longarm sewing machine has become a popular and familiar concept to quilters.
Read more about this topic: Longarm Quilting
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)