Quilts historically hold elements of memory and commemoration. Often utilizing remnants of fabric recycled from other textiles, they are encoded with deep meaning that is specific to the maker, the recipient, and those close to the events captured in bits of cloth. By the late nineteenth century, and especially after the national centennial celebrations of 1876, quilts became literal scrapbooks through the idiom of the crazy quilt whose irregular patches incorporated personal references and ephemera associated with time, place, and occasion. The evolution of the crazy quilt coincided with the availability of domestically produced luxury textiles, including velvets, brocades, and silks, and the development of a secondary weaving industry based on commemorative and decorative ribbons woven with a jacquard loom. Known as Stevengraphs, the collectible ribbons were available in hundreds of standardized patterns and could also be specially commissioned. Embellished ribbons, whether woven, printed, or painted, became standard fodder for incorporation into the crazy quilt as shorthand for lived experience.

The silk quilt made in 1923 by Eudoxia Amelia Kelly Niblin for her niece Euda Aletha Kelly (1911–1964) celebrates a specific chapter in the history of American expansionism, when explorers, missionaries, and pioneer families traveled on horseback and in covered wagons across challenging terrain to settle in the Oregon territories. Beginning with the Lewis and Clark expedition mandated early in the nineteenth century by President Jefferson, the establishment of commercial routes to and incorporation of the western territories were perceived as part of the Manifest Destiny of the United States. Quilt researcher Deborah Harding established that this quilt testifies to the pioneers who settled the Willamette and other valleys of the Oregon Territory before 1859, when the southeastern portion of Oregon was admitted to the Union. Against a background of pieced blocks, a center medallion is composed of reunion ribbons of the Oregon Pioneer Association (OAP) dating from 1846 to 1922, commemorating important figures in the history of Oregon. It also includes ribbons denoting grange and political events, and the Wives of Veterans of the Indian Wars, a reminder of bloody encounters, especially at the expense of native populations, that accompanied the western expansion. The center handkerchief is a souvenir from the 1894 Midwinter Fair in San Francisco; the Eiffel tower-like building is the Electric Tower. Eudoxia was the daughter of two Oregon pioneers, Plympton Kelly, who fought in the Yakima Indian War, and Elizabeth Aurora Clark. As a direct line descendant of pioneers who arrived before statehood, Eudoxia was eligible for membership in the association. It is not known what occasioned the gift of this quilt, documenting with pride the family’s pioneer status, to her niece.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Oregon Pioneer Association Quilt for Euda Aletha Kelly," exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.