John Hewson

I've been studying the prints of John Hewson, a Philadelphia wood block printer who was in business from 1774 to about 1820. He's sometimes credited as America's "first calico printer," but there's no way to know who was America's first calico printer. Several people left records earlier than Hewson, though.

The bird is from a snapshot of a Hewson print I took at an exhibit at the Winterthur Museum a year or two ago.

I made a list of all the quilts and counterpanes featuring Hewson's fabric that you can see online. Here's one from the Winterthur.
http://content.winterthur.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/quilts&CISOPTR=380&CISOBOX=1&REC=2

To see more go to my web site http://www.barbarabrackman.com/---to the subpage "Quilt History."
http://www.barbarabrackman.com/faqs2.aspx
At the bottom you'll see a list of clickable quilts.

I am going to do a luncheon Roundtable Discussion called "America's First Calico Printer" at the American Quilt Study Group seminar in San Jose in October. It's time to start signing up so click here to find out more about the seminar.
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/seminar.asp

Hexagon blocks about 1830-1850
These hexagons are pieced over paper in the technique we might call English paper piecing. The seamstress basted the fabric over paper hexagons cut from old letters or ledgers and then whip-stitched the hexagons together.

If you'd like to know more about needlework techniques like paper piecing and whip-stitching and how to use them to date antique quilts you will want to go to my webpage. On the page called Clues in the Calico you will find at the bottom files labeled "Clues in Techniques." I've put ten different files up there with information about dating quilts using everything from applique to zig-zag stitch. It's an update to my 1989 book Clues in the Calico. It seems like this information, too big for a book, can be most useful digitally stored on a giant server---somewhere---where people can read it.

Click here: http://www.barbarabrackman.com/faqs5.aspx

M-m-m-m Cake!

Birthday Cake by Wendy Turnbull

Here's a low-calorie cake that we've been making in my sewing group. Above one slice of red velvet by Wendy; a cake quilt for Sarah who makes birthday cakes for us all year round and at the top another version by Bobbi Finley, whipped up from The Morris Garden reproduction collection I did for Moda. The Morris Garden fabric should be in the quilt shops in July; the pattern for the Birthday Cake is available now from the Kansas City Star Books
or your local quilt shop.

https://www.pickledishstore.com/categories.php?CID=102

Serpentine Stripes 2

Celine sent a photo of her grandmother wearing a dress of serpentine stripes. The fashion for these snakey stripes (hence the name) was revived at the end of the century and here we have a woman at work about 1895 wearing a fashionable but serviceable dress. Celine writes that Ellen Mason Grable is standing to the left of her husband Silas Grable. The other men were his brothers, salmon fisherman and loggers in Ilwaco, Washington.

She also writes: "It's funny how us quilters always notice the fabric!"