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Ways & Means
 Jean Bartholomy Scott gave this quilt to her son in 1992. The family name was "Blocks."https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=12-8-603It looks like this simple four-patch of squares and...
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1923: Quilts A Century Ago
 Quilt in blue & white solids from eBay dealer GB-Best in PennsylvaniaWhile 2023 is slipping away we should go back 100 years and see what quilterswere doing in 1923. It was the Jazz Age, five...
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Atlanta Garden BOM: One More Block to Go
 Jeanne Arnieri's Atlanta GardenThe year is winding down and so is the pieced Block-of-the-Month we've been stitching over at my CivilWarQuilts blog.The 11th of twelve blocks for Atlanta Garden was...
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Early Mills - Cabots & Lowells
 Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, 1888American aristocracy or nouveau rich? Her money came from her first set of in-laws in which patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt was once a steamboat pilot.Europeans have...
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"The Patchwork Quilt:" 1845
Photograph of a mill operative, once in the collection of the Museum of American Textile History, photonow perhaps at the University of Massachusetts/Lowell librariesThe young women who worked in the...
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Swag Borders
 Recently noticed this swag border anchored by heartsin a mid-19th-century quilt in an online auction. I hadn't seen that border with the hearts before.Notice it's only along one side; on the other...
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Phoebe's Favorite Dogtooth #6: Princess Feather
 Phoebe's Favorite Dogtooth #6: Princess Feather by Becky BrownPrincess Feather patterns in a variety of interpretations were popular with 19th-century quiltmakers. One could use a template as Anna...
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Winter 2023-2024 in the International Quilt Museum
 Went to Lincoln, Nebraska last week to see the quilts shows atthe International Quilt Museum.Sue Reich has donated her collection of World War I & II quilts to the museum and they are showing the...
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A Southern Design
 Quilt by Minnie Parnham of Magnolia, ArkansasMid-20th-centuryMinnie Manness Parnham (1896-1975)from Family SearchWhat did Minnie call her quilt pattern?She might have found the pattern in the Weekly...
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Early Mills: Cabots & Lowells
  Self-portrait by Lydia Cabot Perry (1848-1933) "The Green Hat"American aristocracy or nouveau rich? The artist was a "Boston Brahmin,"her parents being Samuel Cabot III and Hannah Lowell...
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Bertha Stenge & The Key to Winning Prizes
 Bertha Sheramsky Stenge (1891-1957)About 1935When Bertha Sheramsky was 18 and living with her parents and older (half-?) brother in Alameda, California, the census taker recorded her as an "artist"...
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The Great American Quilt Contest
 Lida Finnell's quilt in the Smithsonian's collectionmay be the one that earned her a prize at a fair in Kentucky in 1890.Over at our Six Know-It-Alls Facebook page we looked at contests as a...
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Statue of Liberty Centennial Quilt Contest 2
 "Lady Liberty Lights the Way" by Nancy M. Crasco, MassachusettsIn the last post we looked at quilts entered in the 1985-1986 contest to celebrate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. Here are a...
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Phoebe's Favorite #7: Pineapple
 Phoebe's Favorite #7: Pineapple by Elsie RidgleyThe Ladies Art Company sold a pattern for a variation with triangles to indicate the fruit's prickly surface.The pattern was popular before the Ladies...
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Perpetual Motion in Black & White
 A clever block from the Nancy Cabot column in theChicago Tribune in 1936"A most amazing group of perpetually revolving pinwheels,"said the fictional Nancy.One block repeated across the top produces...
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Cleveland Tulip/Carolina Lily
 Quilt signed and dated 1840, Agnes Douglas Knox (1816-1852), Belmont County, OhioCollection of the International Quilt Museumhttps://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/20130580001Agnes, born in...
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Quilt Contests: 1939-1940 New York World's Fair
 In 1939 and 1940 New York held a World's Fair while Europe began six years of World War II.The Fair sponsored a 1940 quilt contest "Through the Needle's Eye". The New York Public Library has publicity...
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Better Living In The World of Tomorrow, 1939
Embroidery with the fair's symbolThe New York World's Fair in 1939 was continued into 1940, open from spring to fall each year. In the second year the Fair sponsored a quilt contest America Through the...
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Hannah Callender Samson: Her Diary & Her Quilt: 1
Center detail of a silk, wholecloth quilt in the collection of the National Park Service's Independence Park with a quilted inscription:“Drawn by Sarah Smith Stitched by Hannah Callender and Catherine...
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Hannah Callender Samson: Her Diary & Her Quilt: 2
 I finished Hannah Callender Sansom's diary and read the editorial analysis. I was quite confused as to some of their assumptions.The problem may lie in the basic structure of the editing. Klepp and...
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