And that may not have always been far from the truth, as a new exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles demonstrates.

Under Cover: Political Expression in Traditional Quilts, which runs Aug. 19­Oct. 26, shows how quilters (primarily women) in the past two centuries used their needlework for a lot more than keeping the family warm.

Though this exhibit focuses on pieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries, political quilts in one form or another existed well before that era. "In every historical period, depending on what rights women had, certain kinds of gestures or objects or actions might be considered political," says Jane Przybysz, executive director of the museum. Przybysz recalls an 18th-century quilt she once encountered during some research that featured the name of the quilter—a woman—stitched prominently in the center of the quilt, along with the statement that the quilt was a gift to her daughter for her wedding. This would have made a bold statement in the 1700s, when women couldn't legally claim ownership of anything

Quilters a century later took up their needles in support or protest of a number of political issues. "Certainly, there's evidence to suggest that women who were in favor of the temperance movement used the Drunkard's Path pattern," says Przybysz. "Among abolitionist women, there's some evidence to suggest that there were certain patterns that were designated for quilts to signal safe houses for slaves escaping from the South to the North."

Existing patterns sometimes gained new popularity in a political context. For example, the simple geometric Log Cabin pattern was used as an expression of support for Abraham Lincoln.

Many quilters offered up their handiwork for that most political of events: fundraisers. "Signature quilts were made to raise money for any number of causes," says Przybysz. "Women would often make signature quilts and they would charge people in the communities something like a dime to have their names embroidered on a particular quilt block and set in this quilt that was then usually raffled off. So they tried to leverage multiple kinds of donations from this kind of quilt."

Among some of the striking and unusual quilts featured in the Under Cover exhibit is a quilt depicting the flag of the deposed Hawaiian monarchy. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of that flag was an expression of patriotism considered treasonous to the United States, the islands' colonial government. "This particular quilt is very unique because it's an early Hawaiian crest quilt and would have been very subversive in the time that it was made by a Hawaiian woman and/or her family," says Przybysz.

Another quilt displayed in the exhibit offers a patriotic expression with a twist that may surprise modern audiences. The piece features cigarette premiums, an early tobacco marketing gimmick. "The quilt was made in red, white and blue—very patriotic colors—using these silk pieces of fabric that were printed by cigarette manufacturers to entice women as a new market to try cigarettes," Przybysz says. "They were little slips of fabric that were sold with tobacco. This was something to make this product attractive to women and the manufacturers of these printed various series of them: flags of the world was one series, or there was birds of the world. Famous actresses was another series. Women starting collecting these series and making quilts out of them. The manufacturers' assumption was even if women weren't smoking, often they were the ones in the household doing the buying." The quilt not only proclaims its maker's sense of patriotism, but reflects a gradual change in women's roles as women came into the public sphere, if only at first as consumers.

Przybysz will explore a number of topics related to women's history and quilting as a cultural and political phenomenon in "Sentimental Activists: Quiltmakers as Reformers in American Culture," a lecture and performance on Oct. 13. She will discuss how some 19th-century literary works have impacted modern perceptions of quiltmakers and quilting parties—most notable of these is Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1859 novel The Minister's Wooing. Stowe's book contained a chapter titled "The Quilting Party" that so captured popular imagination, it is considered to have influenced many historical accounts of quilting gatherings and cemented the art of quilting as Americana.

Przybysz will also sing songs that women shared with one another at quilting bees—songs that often offered cautionary tales or advice about children and marriage. Says Przybysz, "There's some element of truth in fact that quilting parties were opportunities, especially for rural women, to really have consciousness-raising groups." These traditional tunes were not exactly speeches promoting suffragism, but in a way, the sharing of ideas among women, slowly emerging from isolated roles restricted to the home, reveals a quietly political undercurrent to gatherings long dismissed as mere "women's work."