Elizabeth Foote’s Bed Rug

Elisbaeth “Betty” Foot was born in 1750 in Colchester, CT. She was married, alongside her sister and brother, during a triple wedding on November 5, 1779. She made this bed cover for the occasion, using homespun yarn and home-dyed wool. The design, inspired by elite motifs, was her own.

Like many other women in Connecticut – where nearly three quarters of homes had spinning wheels, and more than one in five had a loom – Foot spent much of her time carding and spinning wool, weaving, sewing, knitting, and quilting. This work took on political significance before the war, when the colonies signed “non-importation agreements” to boycott British products, and became essential during the war itself, when women produced clothes and other necessities for the war effort. In a 1775 diary entry, Foot wrote that watching a fellow spinner knot a rug, she “felt Nationaly into the bargain.”

The rug is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford.