In the early years of the New Deal, some federal administrators aimed to develop experiments in cooperative living and farming. In 1933 the government established the Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corporation to establish such communities. The FSA sponsored cooperative loans for its clients to collectively purchase livestock and farm machinery. Also through the FSA, the Tenant Purchase Division broke up large southern plantations and subdivided them into small family farms anchored by cooperative farm associations and community centers. And federal farm labor camps provided temporary homes within planned communities for migrant agricultural workers. The New Deal mentality was one in which Americans were stronger when they banded together, rather than went at it alone, what historians have called a cooperative ethos.
A romanticized version of collectivism took the form of a quilting bee, a nostalgia fueled embodiment of a community coming together to make the work both more efficient and more pleasurable. Quilting bees, or quilting frolics or simply quiltings, as they were often called, emerged as a performative reenactment of perceived colonial values during the sanitary fairs of the Civil War and late nineteenth century World’s Fairs. Work parties including quiltings certainly did exist in early America, although nostalgia for those preindustrial days made the myth more potent than the reality of such work parties.
Quilting bees made good sense during the Depression, as the women, and sometimes men, stitching together could support one another, lifting each other through the trials and tribulations of the Depression. With such idealized understandings of group quilting, it is no surprise that again and again FSA photographers presented women working in groups on quilts.
Cooperative quiltmaking took various forms. Some federally sponsored planned communities used surplus cotton to make quilts. Others used their quilting to raise money for mutual aid. Photographers took pictures of various quilting clubs, showcasing collectivism as a desirable New Deal value.
