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"Quilt, Tumbling Blocks with Signatures Pattern," Adeline Harris Sears, begun 1856.

Sears (1830-1931) was only 17 when she had the idea for this quilt. She mailed diamonds of white silk to every significant person she could think of or read about, requesting they be autographed and mailed back. Most people did.

Sears' family was wealthy, and it's said she got Lincoln's autograph in person, and danced with him at his inauguration.

There's writers like Hawthorne, Dickens, Emerson, Irving, Longfellow, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a number of scientists, politicians (with eight Presidents!), artists, educators, Civil War heroes, and clergy. It took her 11 years to complete the quilt, which has 360 signatures in all, and a total of 1,840 patches of cloth. The quilt was written about in national magazines of the time, and is now a museum piece.

Sears did other quilts, but nothing on the same level as this, a document of its time.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.