Making Charm Quilts was a Victorian phenomenon. Charm Quilt makers borrowed the idea from button collectors. Stella Rubin speculated in her book How to Compare and Value American Quilts that the charm quilt was linked to the 1850-1870 fad of collecting one each of numerous types of buttons.

Young women would thread the buttons onto a string in hopes that their Prince Charming would arrive when they had collected 999 buttons and provide the 1000th button from his coat. In the lore associated with charm quilts, each quilt should contain 999 pieces—a feat rarely achieved. (Speaking from experience, I became so obsessed with cutting my charms and counting my charms, and cutting my charms and counting my charms, dreaming about cutting my charms and counting my charms, that I basically was Crazy… I have 1000 cut (four times—one for each child) and I can’t wait to start sewing them).

Whether charm quilts actually took their name and concept from the charm string of buttons is uncertain, but they became popular following that fad in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

I have my Great Grandmother’s string of buttons that I have always cherished, and I guess that is why I want a Charm Quilt to match.

Some of the most popular charm shapes are hexagon, pyramids, clamshell, baby blocks, kite, apple core, square, rectangles, etc. Here are a few examples with the number of shapes to make a Charm Quilt.

Have fun in the experience—Our grandmothers endeavored to make these quilts with no two pieces alike—that’s where the charm lies.

—Needlework editor Emma S. Tyrell in a 1929 issue of Wallace’s Farmer