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Show Despite admonitions from early Church leaders to "produce and manufacture what you consume," most Mormon women bought "Babylon's" forbidden goods when they were available. But, for the most part, necessity and tradition led them to create useful as well as decorative items through crafts shared with women elsewhere. Quiltmaking, a necessity that ascended to the realms of the decorative through the use of color and design and which served an important social function, was a priority item on the frontier. The "friendship quilt," which is perhaps the most revealing quilt tradition, commemorates people, a place, and a time in history by combining patches made by individual women that elaborate upon a central theme. Quiltmaking is as strong a tradition today as it was in pioneer times, whereas silk-making, a short-lived industry begun to contribute to Mormon self-sufficiency, was in the end a mere symbolic venture. 92 |