At first glance, this exhibition might seem a bit quaint, its subject — textiles and the Civil War — evoking Americana more than American history. But this show, “Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War,” which opened last month at the New-York Historical Society after originating at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Mass., does much more: It turns Americana back into history.

The show traces its thematic threads through that period’s fabric with such care that, after seeing the patterns, you will not easily look at coarse woven cloth, the American flag, quilts, mourning clothes — or perhaps even the Civil War — in quite the same way again. Textiles, we come to see, did not just reflect the war’s events or were just another element of the conflict; in many ways they were at the war’s heart.

The exhibition doesn’t tie everything up as neatly as it could, and the coverage is necessarily thin in places, but the overall effect is lasting. The show’s 130 or so artifacts come from a wide range of institutions and were gathered and interpreted by Madelyn Shaw and Lynne Zacek Bassett — the original curators and editors of the catalog — and restaged here through Aug. 24 with additional artifacts by Margi Hofer, a curator at the historical society. It will travel to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Intriguing curiosities stand out. Here, for example, is an 1861 pattern for soldiers’ mittens: The forefinger is independent, set apart so it could manipulate a trigger. Or look at scraps of the silk fabric used to make hot air balloons that floated over enemy lines for reconnaissance, foreshadowing air wars as yet decades away. Here too is the first flag made after Congress passed a law near the war’s end that American flags had to be made of American cloth.