Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE

Years ago I was knocked out by this crib quilt on

a visit to Colonial Williamsburg.

Tulip Cross Crib Quilt 45-1/2" x 35-1/2"

Member of the Richter Family, Ripley County, Indiana.

Possibly Anna Richter in Sunman, Indiana

A few months ago I saw another version of the same pattern in Julie Silber's stack of antique quilts for sale at the American Quilt Study Group in New Hampshire.

I took a picture and when I went back to look at the whole

thing it was gone. Sold to a happy collector.

I have photos of several quilts in the same pattern in a file.

Here it is as a center medallion in a quilt documented

by the Indiana project, seen in Terre Haute. They thought it might

be 1850. From the picture with it's strong green and feather quilting

this seems possible.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=68-104-12A0

I thought this quilt in Mary Koval's booth was the same

one but it's not. Similar corners and a border, but this

one's more delicate and missing some parts.

I mention the strong greens because several versions like this one sold at Cowan's Auctions were stitched with the fugitive greens so common after 1880. Those leaves and stems were probably once a dark green with a touch of blue but the early synthetic dyes faded badly. So I am guessing this one is after 1880.

From an online antique dealer

Same arrangement of the same blocks. It's not

the same quilt though. The green has faded more gray than brown in

this one.

Coxcomb

International Quilt Study Center & Museum

#2007.038.010

Yet another example, same fading problem with the

greens (Turkey reds and double pinks are far faster.)

Fading to tan where it was folded and exposed to light.

The one above, fortunately, is dated: 1885

but that's all they know.

This one from an eBay auction has faded so

badly that the green is barely visible

The pale scallop on the left was once dark green I bet.

So what we have here is a regional pattern that seems to have been passed around from
1850 to about 1900. It was often the center of a nine-block applique quilt of three different designs. I'd guess that region was Indiana.

Ripley County is near the Ohio River

west of the state of Ohio.

Coxcomb with Birds

84" x 84", 1995

Look how nice the green is on this one. That's because it's

a recently done reproduction.

Anita Shackelford made it for her book

Coxcomb Variations.

I imagine you can find a pattern here

and make one of your own.

https://www.anitashackelford.net/

Anita owns the antique quilt she used for inspiration.

See the crib quilt at Colonial Williamsburg here:

http://emuseum.history.org/view/objects/asitem/search@/0?t:state:flow=bd25c64b-8caa-438a-9863-0aa17625ff63

The caption gives us a good deal of information.

"According to Don Walters, the dealer who sold the quilt, the quilt can be attributed to Alma Richter. Another quilt in a similar pattern (in a private collection in the 1980s) was also said to be made by Alma Richter in 1854. A search of Ripley County, Indiana, records failed to locate an Alma Richter around that date. However, one Alma Richter, 1898-1984, had a German-born Grandmother who lived with her family in Ripley County, Indiana. The Grandmother Anna Richter was a widow who was born in Germany in 1814 and immigrated to the United States in 1841. Anna Richter may be the real maker of the quilt. It appears that the woman whose estate was sold in 1985, Alma, may have been mistakenly credited with making the quilt. It is unclear where the 1854 date came from."

Nineteenth-century quilt from the Rosenberg Collection

at the University of Alberta

The late Doreen Speckmann used to give a lecture in which she entertained us with photos of Anorexic Applique.

I still save photos, thinking of her. Here's a little show to remember Doreen.

Detail of a similar crib quilt from Bill Volckening's collection

Was there more to this design at one time?

From a Maryland applique sampler

Leopold and Charlotte

Frankly, Uncle Leopold, I was shocked by revelations in last week's episode of Victoria on PBS.

Alex Jennings doing a pretty darn good job of looking like

Albert's Uncle Leopold, the King of the Belgians in a

similar toupee.

He's playing it a bit diabolically for my taste, though.

I've always had a soft spot for Uncle Leopold. He

seems to have had his niece Victoria's and nephew Albert's

best interests at heart when he played matchmaker

and tutor to both.

Wedding of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg &

Princess Charlotte of England

1816

And I remember his first marriage to Victoria's cousin, Charlotte Princess of Wales. Leopold would have had the same position as Albert as husband to the Queen of England had Charlotte not died in childbirth at 21 years old only 17 months after her marriage. His second wife Louise Marie of Orléans was French royalty. He knew how to parlay marriages into dynasties.

Commemorative jug for the 1816 wedding

He was a handsome young man.

"I marry the best of all I have seen and that is some satisfaction,"

wrote his fiancee who had broken one engagement.

As cute as Lord M., don't you think?

Well, you don't read this to hear me go on about television hunks at Windsor Castle. It's about quilts and fabric. And Uncle Leopold made it into several quilts....

By way of this panel or commemorative medallion,

printed to celebrate the Charlotte/Leopold marriage.

In the inner border:

"Princess Charlotte of Wales Married

to Leopold Prince of Saxe Cobourg May 2, 1816"

Center of a cut-out chintz medallion in the collection

of the New England Quilt Museum.

Pheasants and Portuguese stripes in the border.

This looks quilted with no batting.

The panel was printed as yardage as in this piece from

the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The name of the printer on the tax stamp is

John Lowe and Co. Furniture Printers, Shepley Hall.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O164887/panel-unknown/

I recently found a photo of a medallion floating around on the internet:

Four royal wedding panels with palm trees and pheasants

And peacocks.

Here's one that looks quite British, sold at Tennant's Auctions last year.

Hearts are a nice addition.

Another one with hearts, mostly pieced, sold ten years

ago at Christies in London.

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5072374

If you want to know more about the plot and Uncle Leopold's revelations see this link:
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2018-01-26/was-prince-albert-really-the-illegitimate-son-of-prince-leopold/

More about Princess Charlotte at my blog post here:
http://austenfamilyalbumquilt.blogspot.com/2014/11/block-34-queen-charlottes-crown-for.html

And more about commemorative panels here:
http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/04/british-commemorative-panels.html

From Stella Rubin's inventory.

About 1820-1840

When I dream about getting really good at piecing I dream I will make a quilt like this.

Sunflowers of chintz.

Setting shapes in the quilt above were cut from this popular chintz.

Here's a great sunflower from the Rhode Island Project

using a variation of Swainson's Palm Tree print.

Sunflowers and chintzes: Apparently patchwork fashion in the 1820-1840s. The busy quilts give you a glimpse of decorating taste at the time.

Collection of the Marquette Regional History Center.

Michigan Project & the Quilt Index.

Documenters dated it to last quarter of the 19th century

but I'm confused. It certainly fits in with the earlier style and

fabrics.

The link:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-28C4

Like those above it's based on a set of a circle and a squeezed

square rather than a block set....

Circular sunflowers connected with a shape that fits between.

Here in white.

On the diagonal but like Mary Orgain's below.

Quilt signed and dated 1818 Sterling and Mary Orgain

Texas quilt project & the Quilt Index.

Made by Mary Elizabeth Jones Orgain (1801-1878)

Collection of the Briscoe Center

Tastes change and fashion for patterned chintz gave way to more interest in patchwork pattern.

Mary Esther Hoyt Smith's quilt from the Connecticut Project

might be considered transitional taste.

Busy sunflowers and busy chintz confined to square blocks.

See the Connecticut book for photos of her quilt.

Here's the chintz Mary Esther used.

From Jeffrey Evans Auction

Sunflowers may be confined in this masterpiece but some are still busy, busy, busy.

It's a fight between the patchwork and the print.

You can see how a look this distinctive could become old fashioned.

As calico became the thing.

Mid-19th-century taste from Stella Rubin's shop

By Catherine Bennett Tandy, from Mary Barton's collection

Iowa Project and the Quilt Index

From a Pook & Pook Auction

Nice enough, but awfully tame if you love the tension

between patchwork pattern and printed pattern.

Field of Sunflowers by Gabrielle Paquin

You might want to make a quilt inspired by the early examples as Gabrielle Paquin has done.

It looks like she used a block

If you want a period look with an all over design (shows off the chintz better)....

Find a Sunflower in a block pattern you like.

This one is BlockBase #3480.

Print templates for the desired size. Instead of cutting the corner shapes as

they appear, fold your chintz fabric in quarters adding seams along the curves and outside edge but

not the lines on the fold.

William Morris-ey

There is also a pattern for a reproduction made by

Carol Gilham Jones in my out-of-print book

America's Printed Fabrics. Carol's is pieced over paper arcs.

At the Maryland Institute Fair in 1852 Daniel Dobler showed a quilt he'd been given by students when he left teaching in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania to return to Baltimore.

Remarkably, his quilt survives.

Daniel's great-granddaughter Mary Sauerteig (1931-2016) showed the quilt she'd inherited. Her grandfather's name was on one of the blocks.

"From John William B??? Dobler

To his affectionate Father

Elizabethtown Lan Co Pa

Nov 12th 1849"

"It was given to Mary Sauerteig's great-grandfather, Daniel Dobler, by students, relatives and friends upon his retirement from teaching in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Mary's grandfather, along with another of Daniel Dobler's sons, each provided one of the squares."

Variations of the fleur-de-lis pattern were popular

for album quilts at the time. I have pictures of five with dates of 1849

on them, this one from the Moda collection.

In a history of Lancaster County Dr. Daniel Dobler (1804-1859) is described as a physician with no formal medical training. "After working in a drugstore he became a practicing physician at 28." In 1844 "he decided to teach at the schoolhouse adjacent to the Lutheran Church." Son John William also maintained a school in Elizabethtown. The quilt may have been made by members of a Lutheran church, perhaps Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church where two infant Doblers who died in the 1830s are buried.

Quilt dated 1849

Another son Gustavus (1839-1903) became a Maryland state senator. His biographies reveal a bit more about his father. Daniel was born in 1804 in Baltimore to German immigrants.

Christina Dobler's grave. Husband

and wife are buried in the Baltimore Cemetery

He married Christina Barbara Iehle (1802-1867) from Wurtemburg, Germany. He is described as a "chemist, physician and teacher [and] a manufacturer of paper boxes" in Baltimore.

Dobler quilt on display

The Doblers had at least seven children and it seems that some also entered handiwork at the Baltimore fairs. In 1852 Miss P.T. Dobler of Elizabethtown entered a vase of paper flowers (presumably daughter Paulina Theodora) and Miss Catherine Dobler showed two cases, crochet work.

Block from a quilt dated 1849 for Sarah Mullen,

Lancaster County, Collection: Lancaster History.

Links among people who signed mid-19th century album quilts are mostly unknown, but church connections are obvious in many. School connections are not found so often. Daniel Dobler's is one of perhaps twenty school-related signature quilts I have in my picture files. This year's Block of the Month at my Civil War Quilts blog is focused on school connections with a dozen pieced album blocks planned. See the first post in Antebellum Album here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/01/antebellum-album-1-wandering-lover.html

A pattern of sorts for this combination of hearts and fleur-de-lis.

Print it at 200%.

And read more about the fleur-de-lis albums here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/06/philadelphia-beauty-or-four-frogs.html

A long time ago Margaret signed and dated this quilt giving us an opportunity to use it as a teaching tool for dating quilts.

I have a new feature on the American Quilt Study Group's Facebook page. Once a month in 2018 I will post an antique quilt with the date on it (and not tell you the date). Readers can guess a date and tell us why they picked that particular year.

After a week I'll post the actual date and those who came closest will get a a fat quarter of reproduction fabric in the mail.

Oh Boy!

We can all learn something by the crowd-sourced dating information. Here are some of the educated guesses about Margaret's quilt:

Sharon P: I will go with 1850s, based on fabric and double rod quilting [or is it triple rod?]. [Two lines then a skip and two more lines = double rod]

Taryn: The 1850s because I own a dated (1854 or 1857, can't tell which) quilt that has very similar fabrics, quilting and design style

Teri: I also guess c. 1850. the binding looks like that early unreliable blue-over-yellow green of that era. Also as best I can tell, the red part of the peonies is made of 3 chevrons rather than 6 diamonds, which is how some southern Indiana quiltmakers pieced Polk's Fancy quilts of the Mexican War era.

(I hadn't noticed that chevron applique Teri. Just assumed those were diamonds)

Kathy M.C: The funkiness of the appliqué, specifically the border, tells me just shy of 1850. Thus my decision on 1848.

Barbara G: 1860-1870 turkey red print set Foulard, yellow in the small figures, Indiennes? Block set on point? Vines on the border

Kay: 1848, though it could be later if someone saved fabrics. Double row quilting, yellow green with a simple print, and "Carolina lily" variation say early red and green to me. No chintz or interesting prints to date it much earlier. Repeated block pattern tends to be early or much later. Later greens tend to have more blue, but hard to tell if my computer screen makes it look different than it is.

Margaret C. Roberts her quilt

done March the 7th

1848

Here's who guessed 1848: Kathy, Kay & Roberta. And as Teri said: "A lot of us were pretty darn close." We AQSG members are really good at this. And if you want to get good make a guess and read their comments each month in 2018.

We'll do it again in February. Check the AQSG Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/AmericanQuiltStudyGroup/posts/

Throughout the history of American patchwork, some quilters have hoped to astound the audience---or at the least the local newspaper editor looking

for a little filler.

27,656 pieces in 1828, Doyleston, PA

Eva Margaret Delaplain Rogers, Missouri,

30,672 pieces she says

Here's an excuse to show some patchwork feats

with 19th-century editorial comments.

I'm not counting these pieces. The quilts have nothing to do with

the newspaper clippings, except for an emphasis on numbers.

7,239 pieces in Charleston, SC, 1834

"An uncommon stock of patience and perseverance"

Bessie Ely, Collection of the Smithsonian Institutiuon

From the New York Project & the Quilt Index

Broken Dishes

Counting stitches in New York

Ocean Wave, Annie Hart Beall, Collection of the Ohio Historical Society.

14,572 pieces says the caption in the Ohio book, Quilts in Community.

58,104 in 1886 in Granada, MS

An octagonal block

Curiosity Quilt with 20,218 pieces in 1912 in Ware Shoals, SC

From Robert Shaw's book

American Quilts: The Democratic Art

45,966---Chatanooga, TN, 1888

"Mary Sewell, a sweet 16-year-old young lady who resides near Chattanooga...has pieced a quilt that has 45,966 scraps in it. It is fearful to think a mind may also go to pieces fastened so long to such useless work. The quilt when completed will be no better for use than the $2 quilt made of plain material."

Elnetta Josephine Gifford, Michigan Project & the Quilt Index.

From Florida Memory

Queen Udell. Her husband says she has the "Patience of Job."

"5810" it says in the center

By Sallie Jane Woodward,Iredell County, North Carolina.

North Carolina project & the Quilt Index.

Gypsy Kisses by Kathy Doughty

February's Past Perfect star is Kathy Doughty of Sydney, Australia. Here's what she says about the above quilt, her favorite of those she's made.

"It looks old and authentic which is something that I love. Although I generally work with bright colors, I love reproduction fabrics and old style color combinations. I believe if the quilting sisters of the past had our fabrics they would have loved using them in what are now the antique quilts we love!"

Each month I feature a quiltmaker who has drawn inspiration from the past and influenced the market on how to use reproduction prints. When you look at Kathy's quilts the words "reproduction fabrics" are not what comes to mind. But she is inspired by quilts from the past---the recent past.

Kathy is one reason we have to re-orient our compasses with South at the top of the map. Australia is the center of the quilt world today

Who's in the antipodes now?

Kathy is originally from the U.S. She spent a decade in New York City in fashion and marketing. She met her Australian husband while working for Swatch Watch at a snowboarding event and moved to Australia in 1990. She and Sarah Fielke opened the shop called Material Obsession in Sydney in 2002. Kathy became sole owner five years later.

Material Obsession is an international travel destination.

Shop books and an innovative internet presence have been quite influential on the quilts of the 21st century

Teachers and students are as creative as Kathy

Teachers like Marg Sampson George have developed techniques and styles

(This is Kelly's work from a Marg class)

Liberty Fields

Nineteenth-century patterns updated.

Fairlawn

Fractured

Kathy talked about her design process in an interview with Jen Kingwell :

"I love antique quilt books for layout and structure ideas. In truth though, most of my designs actually happen on the design wall in my studio. I start a quilt with a stack of inspiring fabrics and a shape, and then I lay out the pieces on the way until I like how they work together."

Vintage top from about 1960---online auction

Kathy's eye is drawn to the quilts from 1940 to 1980, a fairly neglected area until she began exploring them.

Vintage Spin by Kathy Doughty

Characteristics of the era: vivid colors with a busy neutral (think dots) and the idea of pattern on pattern.

In her book Adding Layers she talks about Vintage Spin

"Over the years I have enjoyed collecting vintage fabrics. Some are a bit worn, some wrapped in plastic, some thrift shop clothes....Vintage Spin is a quilt made from those specially collected fabrics that were old or just looked old."

She's great at finding fabrics that "just look old" and combining

them in novel ways that echo that crazy 1960s quilt aesthetic.

This deconstructed Dresden Plate is quilted with Perle cotton twist with the knots on

tops (a strange but common characteristic of 20th-century quilts)

She's now designing fabric for Free Spirit.

Horizons should be in shops this month.

See her shop Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/Material-Obsession-227097140676247

And Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/matobsgirl/

Read an interview with Jen Kingwell here:
https://redthreadstudio.com/blogs/featured-designer/105816198-featured-designer-kathy-doughty-of-material-obsession

And see a trunk show at the Eugene Modern Guild site here:
http://eugenemodernquiltguild.blogspot.com/2011/07/kathy-doughty-material-obsession.html

The Georgia Quilt Project documented this tree-of-life chintz quilt dated 1824 as one
of the earliest Georgia quilts they saw. It's by Mary Elizabeth Clayton Miller Taylor and in the collection of Savannah's Telfair Museum.

"William Taylor. From his Grandmother. 1824"

The leafy fabric at the base of the tree caught my eye. Geranium leaves?

Or Hollyhocks?

Hollyhock and leaves.

Looks like hollyhocks.

Mary Taylor was not the only woman to see potential in that hollyhock chintz. Another Miller, Sarah Miller of Charleston, South Carolina made a similar quilt.

Sarah's quilt was pictured in Florence Peto's 1949 book Quilts & Coverlets.

Peto, a quilt collector and dealer, sold Sarah's quilt to the Shelburne Museum.

"Sarah F.C.H. Miller

1830"

Some read this signature as Sarah T.C. Miller,

but I think Peto's guess of F.C.H. is correct.

Here is the hollyhock leaf base for another cut-out chintz quilt---a tree of roses in

the collection of Drake House Museum in Plainfield, New Jersey.

Plainfield is about 30 miles from New York City.

The rose tree is said to have been made by a daughter of John Hart, a New Jersey signer of the Declaration of Independence.

I don't see any hollyhock blooms or buds in this quilt but the

leaves resting on a dark ground are similar.

Hart and wife Deborah Scudder had at least 7 daughters among their 13 children: Sara, Jesse, Martha, Susannah, Mary, Abigail, Debra.
http://www.drakehouseplainfieldnj.org/collection.html

#1991.0358

We know even less about another example in the collection

of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

But we have a great online view of the leafy base of the "tree"

and get a glimpse of what the original chintz must have looked like.

The quilt was donated in 1991 by Mrs. Robert B. Stephens. Somewhere I've seen that it was found in Massachusetts.

Trolling for hollyhock fabrics I came across this 1833

tree chintz quilt from the Charleston Museum.

Margaret Seyle Burges (1804-1877)

#2010.37.1 Charleston Museum

She used a different base but the hollyhocks are on the branches.

The quilt is inscribed "Burges/Dec 1833" on the reverse.

http://www.charlestonmuseum.org/research/collection/tree-of-life-quilt/946C8730-F883-492C-BF6F-401810876704

Quilt by Mary Eldred Mumford (?-1874)

Newport, Rhode Island

Detroit Historical Museum

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-585

This one is hard to see in the Quilt Index photo. There's a better photo in Phyllis Haders's Warner Collector's Guide to American Quilts showing a few hollyhocks growing out of a base of leaves.

Here we have six cut-out chintz quilts related by the hollyhock fabric and general tree-of-life style with three dated examples: 1824, 1830 and 1833.

That information would help us date the hollyhock fabric if I knew what it looked like. For all the quilts with the fabric I cannot find a picture of the yardage or a whole cloth quilt.

The fabric is undoubtedly imported and quite likely to have been English. The quilts' locations reflect access to imported prints in port cities from Newport and Plainfield to Charleston and Savannah, but how did Mary Mumford in Rhode Island and Mary Taylor in Georgia come to use the fabric in such similar fashion?

Could they have known each other? If the women were of the same age I'd guess they attended a boarding school together, but Mary Taylor was a generation or two older than Mary Mumford and Margaret Burges.

Many mysteries, but I am keeping my eye out for the hollyhock chintz.

Many years ago a family loaned me quilts for photography

including this applique sampler they thought made in Jacksonville, Illinois.

I recognized the pattern as one pictured in Carrie Hall

& Rose Kretsinger's book Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in 1935.

Hall indicated it belonged to Amy Ellen Hall and was made

by Emma Ann Covert of Lebanon, Ohio about 1842.

The similarities were striking. Same 9 blocks (3 patterns)

arranged in the same fashion.

Same vase and vine border.

Here's an almost identical Ohio quilt made in Belmont,

in the collection of the Ohio Historical Society. Note the

extra sprigs around the central wreath.

From an online auction. The corner blocks are oriented the other way.

These 5 red and green applique samplers all look to be about 1840-1870.

A beauty by Hannah Johnson Haines, Jay County, Indiana & Moline, Illinois.

Collection of the Rock Island County Historical Society, Illinois.

Recorded in the Illinois project and pictured in their book.

The Arizona project found one brought from

Columbia, Missouri. The applique is simpler, cruder and

the border is different. It's tough to say from the photo when this

was made.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=67-EC-790

Mary or Marjorie Galbreath, Uhrichsville, Ohio

These two look to be after 1930 by the pastel colors

Perhaps they saw Emma Covert's in Carrie Hall's book

or they might have ....

Lela L Duckwall Vore, Eaton County, Indiana, found in the Indiana Project

Well, how did they share the pattern???

A few months ago I discussed another 9 block designed in the format of a central block with two other appliques in the north/south axis and the diagonal corner blocks.

Like this. It's a great composition.

See that post here:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/11/nine-blocks-same-nine-blocks.html

I am not the only person to notice what balanced design this is.

The central block in the group we're looking at today is a wreath with

6 to 11 rotating leaves...

Not a very common pattern.

Here's another from a Double Irish Chain quilt

The corner blocks point the eye towards the center block with

a bouquet on an entwined stem and, in most of them, a circle or two of 7 dots.

Applique block from a quilt about 1900

The entwined stem is seen elsewhere but that combination of

7 dots and the layout seems unique to this pattern.

The flower pots look like they have a dish to catch the drips underneath.

The paired florals also feature a group of 7 dots.

This sampler has been on my wanna make it list for years---I digitized some of the blocks for a start on a pattern. These should print at 8 inches and if you double that you'd have applique to fit a 16" or 18" block. 3 x 3 at 18" would equal 54" without any border.

Sandy Sutton did this remarkable small version for

American Quilt Study Group's 2016 quilt

study focused on baskets. Repro quilt perfection!

Frances Shaw, attributed to Hagerstown, Maryland.

Found in the West Virginia project.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-6E4

The border on these nine block quilts is a whole 'nother question. It's quite distinctive but not unique to this particular sampler. The West Virginia project saw many examples. Documenter Fawn Valentine nicknamed it the I-70 Border because the locations follow today's highway that was once the National Road---the major east/west travel path now and in the past. Xenia Cord is going to give a paper on the border at AQSG this fall.

Here's an 1850s map of the U.S. with an orange star

for every place mentioned in the sampler quilt histories above.

A national road of pattern sharing.

But what form of pattern?

But I have to confess I didn't. They are mostly

from online auctions

This necktie quilt is a signature quilt

Russel Wright color

Some are cool.

Sally Ingram Parker

from Cuesta Benberry's book

Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans

And some are hot

The perfect quilt

Sandra Kay, Happy Dance

won the prize at QuiltCon 2018 in

Best Machine Quilting Frameless.

My sister (the strawberry blonde on the left) lives near the Pasadena Convention Center where QuiltCon 2018 took place the other day, so I dragged her to a quilt show. It's fun to go with someone who knows nothing about quilts to get her perspective. She has an art degree and she knows what she likes.

First of all, the show floor was crowded, always a good sign.

We went on the first morning.

I had to explain the whole machine quilting thing. She'd never seen a long arm.

There was lots of fabric for sale in modern brights and grays.

Some of Vanessa Christenson's new solids

The atypical caught my eye. Here's a stack of new

French General fabrics in great floral prints echoing the early 19th century.

Anything repro of course was in short supply.

We noticed the emphasis on solid fabrics in the exhibit.

Ohio Snowball on the left by Christine Perrigo

Few entries made use of prints

Color Study H1 by Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Being a traditionalist I have to say my show favorites were

in the Modern Traditionalism category.

Lollipop by Diana Vandeyar

My sister said the last time I took her to a quilt show it was full of pictorial representations of horses, kittens and small children, not to her taste. She was glad to see no puppies on the quilts. Sentimentalism is one thing that modernists past and present disdain.

We ran into several old friends. Here's Moda Lissa and me from

her Instagram page. She's just published a book and I wrote the introductory

chapter on the history of scrap quilts.

Lissa took care of the modernism in fine fashion.

More about Oh, Scrap! soon.

See the winners here:

https://www.quiltcon.com/winners/

Quilt signed C.A.C., 1853

Collection of the National Museum of American Art

Smithsonian Institution

I spent some time last year gathering pictures of quilts with dates inscribed on them and filing them on Pinterest pages by decades or years. The eagle quilt above is on the 1853 page.

Click here:

https://www.pinterest.com/materialculture/1853-quilts-date-inscribed/

I'm only up to 1860.

We recognize the spread eagle with olive branch

and arrows as a symbol of the United States

My goal for this year is to analyze all those images before I go on to the post-1860 years. How did quilts change over time? How did quilting's popularity ebb and flow? How did trends in trade, technology and taste affect that? And in the case of the political imagery like the eagle how did politics influence quiltmaking?

Quilt dated 1853

See more about these eagle quilts with Washington on horseback at this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/01/washington-on-horseback.html

If you look at that 1853 page you will notice an enthusiasm for eagles.

Quilt dated 1853

Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Each pieced star represents a state. Here is Maryland's.

What happened in 1853 of political importance? Franklin Pierce was inaugurated in March, 1853. The Pierce presidency, recalled as one of the worst ever, was a slow-motion train wreck as the North and South became ever more divided. Pierce's inauguration was not likely to inspire such lively images.*

Other current events in pre-Civil War politics tend to be recalled as rather dull. Senator Stephen A. Douglas started working on the Kansas/Nebraska act, which would become a flashpoint in 1854 but that was next year. Senator Henry Clay's death in July, 1853, however, was not just the quiet passing of a politician but an occasion for national mourning. Is that the key?

Quilt signed Phelps, 1853.

Sotheby Auction

Sotheby's assumes it was made in Phelps, Ontario County, New York

Henry Clay had inspired many quilts and this one may be one of them. The words are
"INDUSTRY" above the eagles head and in the ribbon: "WHERE LIBERTY DWELLS, THERE IS MY COUNTRY," attributed to Benjamin Franklin. The word Industry referred to American production, implying support for tarrifs, protectionism that was a Clay motto.

Clay ran for President unsuccessfully three times.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/important-americana-n08400/lot.187.html

Quilt dated 1853 by Lucy Shephard Loomis (1825-1907) Baltimore

Collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum,

#2007-022-0001

Quilt commissioned by Maria Theresa Baldwin Hollander

Collection of Historic New England

This small silk quilt with an antislavery message is not dated but it was shown at the 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York City where it received national attention, perhaps inspiring a surge of eagle quilts.

See a post here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/11/abolitionist-quilt-at-crystal-palace.html

I thought I'd examine the politics of the 1850s and more eagle quilts over the next few days.

Look for a post tomorrow.

*I was reading antislavery activist Hannah Ropes's letters in Civil War Nurse the other day and here's how she described President Franklin Pierce: "the most unmitigated calamity Heaven ever suffered upon the earth." I doubt he inspired many quilts.

Quilt for Robert McDonald, 1855

Old Hope Antiques

As I noted yesterday I've been sorting my pictures of date-inscribed quilts and have made it through the 1850s. People made a lot of quilts in that decade. Yesterday I showed several eagle medallions.

I've also been struck with how popular this particular eagle block was.

Alice Payne's quilt dated 1856

from Barb Vedder's collection.

https://funwithbarbandmary.blogspot.com/2014/10/playing-house-with-alice-payne.html

This is the earliest dated example I have in the picture file:

1851, initials SJS.

Many of today's eagles are from sampler quilts.

A watercolor done by W.P.A. artist Charlotte Angus

in the late 1930s. Would be fun to come across this one with four eagles.

1860 dated sampler

From an online auction

What the birds have in common is:

They are spread eagles.
They have a federal shield on their chests.
They carry a banner on a string.
Wings are two parts; tails 2 or 3.
They often have two stars or circles above them (and sometimes below).
They carry the usual US symbols in their talons---the olive branch of peace and the arrows of war.

1898 for Peter Shank

"Remember the Giver"

A later version

Except they sometimes are quite belligerent, omitting any peaceful discussion. No olive branches here. The symbolism indicates a strong political position but the meaning seems to be lost.

The Shelburne Museum has a repeat block

of the same warrior eagle by Lydia Stafford.

Stafford's quilt was stylized for the cover of

The Magazine Antiques in July, 1933.

And the Aunt Martha pattern company put a more stylized version on the cover of their 1933 catalog,

which included some quilts from the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago.

The Sunnyside Album quilt, dated 1898

Collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum

The pattern was popular in the 1850s and had

a revival in the late 19th century in Ohio's Miami River Valley.

Sue C. Cummings wrote a book about these later sampler quilts.

(It's still in print!)

I recently noticed that IQSC has quite a collection of

the belligerant eagles. This one from the Ditmer Family in Ohio seems

to be from the mid-19th century.

IQSC # 2016.014.0022_1200

Nothing in the banner and no olive branches.

I have stitched this particular eagle several times.

He was in my Bicentennial Quilt in 1976.

I have to find that and photograph it.

Jean Stanclift made a reproduction quilt for my

book Civil War Women. It's 100 inches square.

And so did Janet Finley. This one's 58" square.

We used the Shelburne's peaceful little bird border.

Patti Poe combined the eagle with our War & Pieces border.

The full-sized pattern for the Four-Block quilt is in Civil War Women.

You can buy the book from C&T Publishing

as a Print-on-Demand book or an eBook.

http://www.ctpub.com/civil-war-women-print-on-demand-edition/

I've also digitized the pattern for the 36" eagle block and the bird and swag border.

You can buy it in my Etsy shop.

As a paper pattern through the mail:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/577256218/warrior-eagle-historic-applique-quilt?

Or as a PDF to print yourself

https://www.etsy.com/listing/591040669/warrior-eagle-historic-applique-quilt?

I've been looking at the popularity of the Know-Nothing or American party in the 1850s when so many eagle quilts were made. In May, 1854 they counted 50,000 members. Six months later they numbered a million, controlling eight state legislatures in 1854 and 1855.

Quilt with initials LH & SAH, dated 1856, and eagles in border

James D. Julia Auction.

We know of the tradition of political names for patterns with Whig Roses

and Democrat's Fancy.

Marie Webster pictured this "Whig Rose" in her

1915 book Quilts:

Their Story and How to Make Them

Applique quilt with the name "Fancy Know-Nothing" inscribed on it.

Collection of the Indiana State Museum

I wonder if there were more Know Nothing's Fancy quilts out there.

Songwriter Howard Paul's 1857 song Uncle Sam pictured a young

American in a patchwork jacket.

The song from his musical Patchwork boasts that the U.S.

could beat Russia, Prussia, Belgium etc.

The Know-Nothings had many names. They began as a secret society The Order of the Star Spangled Banner opposed to foreigners and immigration. When asked if one belonged a member was required to say- "I Know Nothing," which is where one name came from. A code name for members was Sam.

"Uncle Sam's Youngest Son, Citizen Know Nothing."

The sheet music covers are from the Library of Congress.

Border from a quilt dated 1854

The original Order of the Star Spangled Banner's

slogan was "America for the Americans."

Another intriguing pattern popular in the 1840s and '50s is the design

we call Star Spangled Banner, an elaborate Feathered Star.

The name comes from a quilt in the collection of the Shelburne Museum,

which has a verse from the National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner quilted into it.

Here's an 1850 reference to a "star spangled quilt" by Mrs. M Bowers

of Baltimore who showed it at the Maryland Institute Fair that year.

We have no idea if her quilt looked like the familiar pattern. And it may be that the popular design referred merely to the popular song rather than a secret society.

But I don't think we should underestimate the effect of

the Know Nothings on the country in the two decades before the Civil War.

Eagle block in Benoni Pearce's album quilt, dated 1850.

Smithsonian Institution Collection

Know Nothing Polka

From Stark County, Ohio

BlockBase #3786

First published as Wandering Jew in the 1906 Clara Stone catalog.

Mary Margaret Watson, West Virginia.

Family name for the pattern: Water Witch.

Quilted in the 1940s.

West Virginia project & the Quilt Index.

This top, circa 1900, was probably inspired by the design in Practical Needlework.

I get the feeling when I look through Clara A. Stone's 1906 booklet of quilt patterns that the designer (whoever she was) might have been frustrated by some of the quilts she inspired. The writer seems to have intended to show traditional designs set in traditional fashion, but because the illustration conventions of the time dictated that patterns be pictured in a square box the traditional setting arrangements were forgotten.

The Tennessee project documented this variation of the pattern

dating to 1840-1860. The block is plain white with an applique bouquet.

The star pattern is in the sashing.

Quilt from the Barker family, Montgomery County, Tennessee

Stone showed two variations of this star pattern

Quilt in the pattern dated 1889

The blocks are unpieced blue calicoes, the sashing is

made of pink and white diamonds with a blue square on point.

You get the same pattern if you eliminate the box from Stone's

drawing and repeat the blocks.

Late-19th-century quilt

Leaving you a good spot for some fancy quilting with no seams to quilt across.

Turkey red and white version by Lena Glasser, Butler County, Iowa

from the Iowa Project and the Quilt Index.

You could set the blocks and sashing on the diagonal as Lena did

or on the square.

Here's a variation that looks to be about 1890-1920.

The 1930s or '40s

When Eveline Foland drew the pattern for the Kansas City Star in 1929 she knew how to picture it. I wouldn't be surprised to find that she had a copy of Stone's catalog. Stone inspired many quilts between 1895 and 1925 and then many quilt pattern designers thereafter. Cupid's Arrow Point didn't inspire many quilters however. Foland didn't seem to understand that those pink V shaped pieces at the top of the pattern were absurd.

"Clip seam" indeed.

Someone followed Foland's pattern.

Hall's block and sashing (she calls it a border) in the collection

of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas

Carrie Hall included her version of Cupid's Arrowpoint in her book Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in 1935, explaining how to set it as "an all-over pattern a bit different from the usual patchwork, since the center patch is white and the interest is in the border around it." She used the same V-shaped piece Foland pictured.

The star in a conventional block version was often made.

Last quarter 19th century,

By Ella Shelton Perry, Tennessee Project & the Quilt Index

Collector purchased in Florida or Georgia. West Virginia

project and the Quilt Index. Maybe the 1940s

Similar look from an online auction

You can keep adding diamonds.

Block style quilt by Elizabeth Jane Hoke with more diamonds,

from about 1890-1920 documented in the West Virginia project.

Family name for the pattern was Cross.

Is this what Clara meant?

Like Nancy Cabot and Aunt Martha---Clara A. Stone was a pen name,

Wilene Smith tells me. There was no real Clara A. Stone. Too bad, I had

a mental picture of her in her Boston home with some graph paper and

a bottle of India ink.

Inner City by Jinny Beyer, 1980

This month's featured Past Perfect quilter is Jinny Beyer who has been providing inspiration for quilters for over forty years.

Inner City is my favorite Jinny Beyer quilt. I can

recall when I first saw it.

Uh Oh! Brand new stash necessary!

If you weren't quilting forty years ago

you won't know of the changes she wrought.

Jinny won first prize of $2,500 in a 1978 contest

sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine.

Her quilt "Ray of Light" stood way above the other nearly 10,000 entries.

Good Housekeeping Contest

Ray of Light, Jinny Beyer, 1978

To illustrate my point: Two representative quilts from the period:

Muncie Quilt Guild, fundraiser for the Childen's Museum

Early 1980s, Indiana Project & the Quilt Index.

Mary Schafer also won a prize in 1978 with her Dutchman's Puzzle.

Jinny taught us to see quilt design, fabric and color in a new way

Jinny Beyer, Sunflower, 1974

Or rather in an old way.

Medallion Quilt by

Sophonisba Angusciola Peale Sellers (1786 - 1859)

About 1830. Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jinny, from Virginia, had lived in India, where she began a hexagon quilt using scraps of Indian fabric. This accident of geography echoed the scrapbag of early American quiltmakers who used traditional Indian calicoes and European prints copied from Indian calicoes.

Hexagon quilt dated 1825 of Indian prints

We can also guess that Virginia with its history of medallion quilts had some influence on her ideas.

Quilt by Jane Gatewood, dated 1795, Virginia.

West Virginia Project & the Quilt Index

Blue Star Sapphire by Jinny Beyer, 1983

She showed us how to look at composition large scale and small.

Each piece is carefully cut to focus on layers of design---

Another antiquated idea that she revived.

Here's Sophonisba's center star with stripes and florals carefully cut

(but not as carefully as Jinny would do it.)

See more of Sophonisba's quilt here:

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/108225.html

Jinny wrote books, chose patterns that would be enhanced by fussy cutting...

Showed us how to do it,

And designed prints to cut up.

Ode to Vasarely by Jinny Beyer, 1985

Mitered borders like an ornate picture frame---a radical idea

at the time.

She's still showing us how to do it well.

Lotus by Jinny Beyer, 2014

See what she's up to today at her blog:

https://www.jinnybeyer.com/blog/

Free patterns every month

Her website is full of Jinny Beyer style.

https://www.jinnybeyer.com/

Read a 1981 article about her in Mother Earth News.

https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/jinny-beyer-master-quilter-zmaz81ndzraw

Here's how WE stitch paper-pieced hexagons.

You baste or glue the fabric edges over paper.

Put the hexagons good sides together and stitch on the sides by

barely catching the fabric.

But I've been thinking about it and I'm beginning to

believe that we are doing it all wrong.

I read some 19th century how-to's and they do not mention placing the hexagons face sides together.

In particular, American Jane Cunningham Croly's 1886 book Ladies' Fancy Work.

She gives instructions for a mosaic patchwork window shade.

After turning over and basting the silk on the wrong side of the hexagons...

"The two are then exactly fitted and sewn together, according to the design."

Well, that's a little vague but the illustration is excellent, showing the whip stitching or over-and-over stitch in progress.

The stitching is about 60% done and it is done from the back with the pieces placed side by side.

Englishwoman Matilda Marian Pullan, who published in England and the United States, was not fond of hexagonal patchwork but she gave instructions more than once.

In The Lady's Manual of Needlework, 1859.

"If you are going to do a large piece of work, it is well worth procuring a die for stamping out a pattern of each of the sections, as you thus attain an accuracy hardly otherwise procurable. With this you stamp out a number of pieces of stout writing paper; and then cover one side of each with the material, turning over the edges, and tacking them round. They are sewed together, on the wrong side, in their proper places, and the papers are generally, but not always, afterwards withdrawn."

No how-to illustration.

She also co-authored Treasures in Needlework with Eliza Warren in 1855 showing this well-copied illustration of mosaic patchwork ideas.

Instructions were more austere:

"The pattern should be placed before the person...several pieces arranged so as to form the design and the edges then neatly sewing under."

Most references I found do not tell the reader exactly how to stitch these.

Englishwomen's Sophia Caulfeild and Blanche Saward's 1882 Dictionary of Needlework:

"Take a dark coloured patch and sew round it six light patches."

Eliza Leslie's 1857 "American Girl's Book"

explains more about shading than technique.

"Sew together neatly over the edge, six of these patches, so as to form a ring."

I guess everybody knew how to do it.

Their grandmothers showed them.

Instructions were not worth the type.

Little Wide Awake Magazine in 1881 told you to lay the diamonds out "before you with the point towards you and then sew on to the right hand...another of darker color."

Are we supposed to join them on the front? Illustrations would help.