"Humility" blocks

Do a Google keyword search on "quilt humility block" and you will find almost a thousand quilt-related websites claiming that back in the old days, quilters would put a deliberate error in their quilts - a block turned sideways, a different shade of red in one part, something skewed or "wrong". This, we are told, comes from the idea that since only God is perfect, making a perfect quilt is prideful. Thus the "humility block" was an exercise in Biblical decorum. Sometimes the story is more elaborate: the "humility block" appears at the lower right corner, or we're told that if a bride made a perfect quilt, her marriage would be unhappy, or that the practice began with the Amish or the Native Americans. 

It's certainly a nice idea. What quilter hasn't goofed at least once in each quilt? Rather than rip out and resew, all we need to do is say "well, that'll be my Humility Block" - and we get to feel connected with our foremothers in the bargain. But the research of quilt historians reveals that the "humility block" appears to be a figment of mid-20th century imagination. 

The subject arose in a June 2000 Quilt History List discussion. Quilt historian and AQS appraiser Bobbie Aug, who has taught pre-1940 Old Order Amish-style quiltmaking, said she once spent a week with an Old Order Amish family. The Amish quilters she asked about the "humility block" were aghast. To them "an intentional error is saying just the opposite - that their work is perfect and that they would have to be purposeful in order to make mistakes." 

After 20 years of research among the Amish in Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Bettina Havig has developed close connections with Amish quiltmakers; she's written two books on the subject. Ask an Amish quilter about the "humility block," she says, "and the answer will be 'I make enough mistakes without making them on purpose'." Havig dismisses the story as "just one more attempt to romanticize an aspect of quiltmaking." She notes that not only has she found no evidence supporting this tradition among the Amish; she hasn't found "any sort of quilt superstition" in that community. 

Xenia Cord, a quilt historian who has taught folklore at Indiana University for more than two decades, also wondered about the concept of "intentional mistakes". "If intentionally making a design flaw in order to avoid the perfection that is relegated to God alone is done to keep the maker humble, isn't this in itself a kind of arrogance? (i.e., 'I'm so good that unless I mess up intentionally, I am perfect.') Where's the humility in that?" Cord also wryly wonders, "[I]s there a quilter among us who is so good that she makes NO errors in piecing, joining, appliqueing, or quilting (that can't be fudged or covered up)?" She hypothesized that "the whole 'intentional flaw' thing may be the observer's way of trying to explain why an unknown quilter, who has made something the observer can't make, would have left that piece upside down, or that heart slightly lopsided, or that line of quilting unfinished." 

In her usual meticulous way, quilt historian Barbara Brackman researched the issue for the June 1988 issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine, and actually tried to trace the story back to its origins. Brackman says no mention of the practice appears in any of the early 20th century quilt books. The first published reference she found to the "humility block" custom is in Florence Peto's 1949 book American Quilts and Coverlets, in relation to one piece of chintz in one quilt: 

In certain localities superstitious quiltmakers tried this way to divert the "Evil Eye" which otherwise might be cast jealously on human endeavor; it was analogous to the Oriental idea that to make a perfect thing is to imitate the Deity, therefore unlucky and presumptuous. 

Peto gives no source for her information, nor does she specify the "certain localities". Brackman notes that Peto's story is identical to the one told at Oriental rug shops (which most rug historians also consider fictional). 

Brackman also researched folklore publications for evidence of the practice, and found many quilt traditions had been recorded ( for example, in 1930s Louisiana a Log Cabin quilt hung on a clothesline was an invitation to a barn raising). But even in oral histories taken as late as the 1970s no mention was made of a "humility block". Yet by 1988, every quilter she interviewed had heard of it, although none had actually been taught the practice by an old-time quilter. They had all read it in a book or magazine, or learned it from their quilt guild.

Historian Jeannette Lasansky, a leading force behind the Union County, Pennsylvania Oral Traditions Project, addressed the question in a 1994 symposium paper, "Myth and Reality in Craft Tradition" (On the Cutting Edge, copyright 1994, Oral Traditions Project).  The Project is known for its painstaking research into all areas of folk art.  Lasansky writes:

Neither do many old-time [Amish and Mennonite] quilters acknowledge the accuracy of [the humility block] myth....Rather they relate being glad to have had even half a dozen quilts in their hope chest [instead of the dozen Ruth Finley claimed was common to 19th century quilters] and of never needing to make a deliberate mistake.  Neither of these particularly well-entrenched myths has been confirmed in any 19th century manuscripts.

The recent research of Louisianan Ashley Graves into quilting and folklore presents another possibility for these sometimes oddly placed blocks.  She observes that historically, "women are considered to be emotional about nearly everything they do," and notes that our culture tends to automatically presume a deep symbolism exists in women's art and craftwork.  She then compares that attitude with the matter-of-fact approach of actual quilters from her own family:

My great aunt [Norma Lee Jeffrey, of Deville in central Louisiana] was showing me a quilt her mother did about 75 years ago. She pointed out that about 6 blocks were turned sideways so that the birds were facing an awkward direction as if she had sewn the blocks together in the dark and didn't realize that they were turned wrong. My great aunt then explained to me that her mother did it because so many women make quilts with the same pattern.  But if the quilter did something a little different it would make hers unique and be sort of a signature. That way each quilt is unique, even the ones made by the same quilter.