Groups of women have often come together over the years to make fundraising quilts. We do not know the purpose of the group quilt in this photo, but we do know it was taken at Granger Homesteads, Iowa, in 1940. The Granger Homesteads were a successful New Deal-sponsored resettlement effort that helped underemployed coal miners obtain subsistence plots of land during the Depression. Led by Catholic priest Luigi Gino Ligutti, the project allowed the miners and their families to get off government relief by 1935. Perhaps this quilt was a fundraising method to help the families continue to be economically self-reliant?

Title: 
Members of the women's club, Granger Homesteads, Iowa.
Maker: 
John Vachon, Farm Security Administration
Taken in
1940