Amana Colonies

June 22, 2011   

Imagine living in a cashless cooperative society in the early 1900s.  Your children attend school year round six days each week.  They go to school all day and after school they are given time to play, but are reminded to be productive.  Most kids tend small flower gardens during this time.  All meals are served in the cooperative’s kitchen.  The menu rotates over a one month period. You don’t have a kitchen or food in your home.  You are given breakfast, lunch, dinner and a morning and afternoon snack.  You are assigned a job.  You might work in the cooperative’s laundry, kitchen, garden, or on the farm.  If you had skills you might quilt, sew, weave wool, or make baskets.  Men would work in the blacksmith shop, brewery, winery, woolen mill or coopery.  Every person had a job and every person was treated equally.  You did not earn cash, but instead your earned credit or points for items not provided to you by the cooperative.  You purchased your home with points.  Last but by no means least—you attend church eleven times each week.  You attend services that represent your current position in your faith with God.  If you need to repent, you attend that type of service.  Maybe you need to go to confession, maybe you are at peace with God, you will attend the service that will tend to your specific needs.

If you wanted to marry, you would apply to the cooperative for permission.  They would remind you that they would rather you not marry, but they usually would grant approval for you to wed.  They would set the date for you and you would wait at least a year.  The bride’s family would see to it that she made a few winter quilts, several sets of sheets, tablecloths, and rugs.  The groom’s family would provide a few summer quilts or coverlets.  The wedding would be held on a weekday, with no guests.  A wedding dinner would be provided for well wishers.  The bride would then go home with her parents and the groom with his parents.  The couple would live apart for a set period of time before they were allowed to live under the same roof, however, they would sleep in separate beds for the rest of their married life.  They did however, manage to reproduce.

The Amana Colonies survived and thrived up until the late 1920’s when the flour mill experienced a dust explosion. The ensuing fire carried over to the woolen mill.  This uninsured loss was too much for the cooperative to handle and it was ultimately disbanded a short time later.

Quilting in the Amana Colonies is very different from what most of us visualize when we think of quilt.  First of all their quilts look more like a modern day comforter.  They only cover the top of the bed and they do not hang down over the edges or pull up over the pillow.  Their quilts were stuffed with feathers from the fowl around the farm.  Quilts were approximately the width of the bed squared.

No quilts survived the trip over from Germany (over 250 years ago) as there was not room for a mere blanket.  Other possessions were far more valuable.  Quilts were often remade when they became worn.  The stitches would be removed, the wool cleaned and re-carded and then the quilt would be remade.  The wool was from the local mill and sateen or printed calico from the calico factory in Amana.  The quilts were very plain and not pieced.   Since the quilts were often remade there are no quilts older than seventy-five years.  The Amana Colonies quilting tradition is carried forth today by a small group of people that understand the value of this craft via the art guild in the current community.