In the United States in the 1930s, the economic crash leading to the Great Depression caused massive unemployment; widespread displacement and migration; and disruption to banking, agriculture, and other sectors. The “New Deal” was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration's package of federal government legislation and executive orders, passed between 1933 and 1938, creating programs and agencies intended to provide the "3 Rs": recovery, reform, and relief. 

By the time the Roosevelt Administration began combatting the Great Depression, the quilt had already become an emblem of how to lift one’s family out of poverty, piece by piece. Quilts had acquired this symbolic heft over the previous century, when Americans developed and perpetuated ideas about why women made quilts and what these objects meant. By the 1930s many Americans were looking longingly back to the colonial era, in search of the frugality and values that allowed Americans during earlier challenging times to persevere. These ideas stemmed from the nostalgia-fueled Colonial Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which celebrated a romanticized version of colonial American life. For quilters, this was double inspiration—they could adapt the fashion of colonial style quilts while also adopting their perceived frugality. And for those of limited economic means, such thrift—even if inspired by romantic ideas of quiltmaking—made good sense. The ideals of colonial quilts that permeated mainstream society from the late 19th century through the 1930s were in fact imagined ones, reinforced with magazines and newspapers alike offering quilt patterns inspired by old-fashioned designs and companies sponsoring quiltmaking competitions.