The federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914 predated the New Deal but became all the more essential during the Great Depression. Smith-Lever created the Agricultural and Home Economics Cooperative Extension Service, through which land-grant and agricultural colleges and universities could receive federal matching funds to send experts—agricultural extension agents and home demonstration agents—into rural communities to provide advice on the best ways of running a farm and household. During the Great Depression, the federal government funded additional home economists through the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and typically staffed New Deal planned communities with a home economist.

These governmental experts promoted gardening, canning, nutrition, home beautification, rational consumption, and home sewing, among other things. And among the domestic sewing tasks home economists promoted was quiltmaking, both individually and in quilting groups—whether in rural farmhouses, in temporary FSA Migratory Labor Camps, or in one of the 100 planned communities created by New Deal programs. These typically rural women made quilts with the advice of home demonstration agents and FSA supervisors, sometimes through organized homemakers’ groups including the home demonstration clubs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service or Adult Education courses sponsored by the WPA.

As the economic downturn limited families’ ability to participate in consumer society, home economists emphasized thrift, reuse, and home production as complements to purchasing goods at market. Quiltmaking, exemplary of the values and skills espoused by this advice, was part of the arsenal of home crafting that home economists encouraged during the New Deal.