New DAR Quilt Catalog

The Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington D.C. has published a catalog of their substantial quilt collection.

Curator Alden O'Brien and needlework teacher Martha Pullen have partnered on a book and cd combination featuring a catalog of the quilts at the DAR Museum with machine embroidery disks inspired by the designs.

You can buy the catalog alone.  See a preview of Historic Quilts of the DAR Museum here:

 http://store.marthapullen.com/descriptions/productspecs/7916.htm

Or buy the disks with the images too.

 (45 multi-format designs in a mixture of 5x7 and 4x4 sizes per disk; Design availability is design-format & hoop size dependent.)

Biblical Images Quilt

[Garden of Eden ]1874

Collection of the DAR Museum

From the Quilt Index digital collection

The DAR collection of American quilts is one of the world's best. Up to now the only way to see it has been in the Quilt Index---not a bad way to see the quilts, but there is little information on the history of the quilt there. Alden O'Brien's curatorial expertise will add a great deal of knowledge to our history of American quilts. 

To view the collection at the Quilt Index click here for the search page:

http://www.quiltindex.org/search.php

Scroll down to the box that says Contributor/Institution and pull down the menu for DAR Museum. Click search and enjoy while you wait for your catalog to arrive.

Princess Feather

Collection of the DAR Museum

From the Quilt Index digital collection

A page from the book.

Here's a link to the DAR Museum's on line shop:

http://www.dar.org/omni/store/MuseumShop.cfm  

Quilt Market This Week

Oh, I'd like to go to Houston, but I am not introducing any new books or reproduction fabric lines at Quilt Market, and it's so nice here in late October ....

that I think I will just stay home and Photoshop a virtual booth.

If Karla, Deb and I were going to have a booth we'd be doing the over-the-top Civil War anniversary theme in a Gone With the Wind booth to promote the 1862: Battle Hymn line. We'd be bound to win the Best Booth competition.

Now you might be saying:

"Fiddle dee dee. War, war, war. This war talk is spoiling the fun at every party.... I get so bored I could scream!"

So we could tell you about my other Moda fabric collections coming into your quilt shops this fall. Here's the schedule:

In shops in late October: Old Fashioned Calicoes
http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_old_fashioned_calicoes.pdf

In shops in November: Morris and Company
http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_morris_and_company.pdf

In shops in January: 1862 Battle Hymn
http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_1862_battle_hymn.pdf

Scarlet O'Hara doll by Madame Alexander

Karla, Deb and I have a lot of virtual sewing to do on those Scarlett O'Hara dresses before Friday. I think we are going to have to have some ribs removed too.

See some people who are getting ready for market in reality:

http://minickandsimpson.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-time-of-year.html

http://minickandsimpson.blogspot.com/2011/10/packing-for-market.html

http://blackbird-designs.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html 

http://comfortstitching.typepad.co.uk/comfortstitching/2011/10/take-it-away.html

Old Fashioned Calicoes

My friend Cookie with her fabulous cheekbones in 1974

A print from Old-Fashioned Calicoes

How old-fashioned you ask?
How about 40 years or so? That's old to some people. Yesterday to others.

Me in floral print pants about 1969.

The pants sort of looked like this. Ditsies.

Cookie and the quilt

She was pictured in the 1974 book

Native Funk and Flash

The photo book by Alexandra Jacopetti and Jerry Wainwright was subtitled An Emerging Folk Art.

It documented the patchwork revival of the 1960s and 1970s. Many people believe the reinvention of quilmaking was a 1976 Bicentennial-inspired fashion but lots of us were making quilts and patchwork clothing ten years earlier.

The book's focus was creative textiles in the Bay Area.

(I don't know who this is but I bet she had a lot of blue calicoes.)

Sort of like this.

Quilters Newsletter

Patchwork was happening all over the U.S. and probably all over the the world.

I have some Old Fashioned Calicoes fabric from Moda. E-mail me or send a link to a digital photo of yourself in your patchwork outfit of thirty or forty years ago that we could post here and I'll pick a winner or two and send you a  box of stuff.

The deadline is November 1, 2011. Click here for my email.

bbrackman@sunflower.com

Or post the link in the comments box.

And thanks to Cookie who loaned me the photographs. She still looks that good. I don't know about the quilt behind her.

1862 Battle Hymn

The November/December issue of McCall's Quilting has three ads for Civil War reproduction prints!

I think mine is the best.

Click here to see more about this Christmas issue:

http://www.mccallsquilting.com/mccallsquilting/issues/index.html?current_issue

My fabric will be shipped to quilt shops in January, but the precuts should be out during the holiday season.

The ad has a sneak preview of the project pattern that shops can offer with the fabric.

1862 Battle Hymn

by Barbara Brackman and Susan Stiff

The pattern is a variation on a design known as Jacob's Ladder that was also called Underground Railroad by Ruth Finley in her 1929 book. We added three Bella Solids to the project in red, ivory and brown for some kick.

The block's a simple nine-patch that can be shaded and set in many ways...

Antique Quilt from about 1900

...resulting in many effects. It was most popular in the 1890-1920 years

Another antique in two colors

Here is one from Laura Fisher's online antique quilt shop.

There are always variations for sale in online auctions.

Read more about the 1862 Battle Hymn fabric here:

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_1862_battle_hymn.pdf

Chrome Yellow

Quilt in a regional design from Tennessee and Texas

Most of the yellows we see in 19th-century quilts were dyed with chrome.

Sampler block, 1840-1860

Chrome yellow and chrome orange

Chrome yellow is closely related in chemistry to chrome orange (what we call cheddar today). It's a true yellow that the dyers called canary yellow.

Pennsylvania quilt 1880-1910

Swatch glued in a 19th-century dye book

 showing chrome or canary yellow.

 The color changes when it comes in

 contact with certain chemicals---

like the acids in an old book's pages.

Observation indicates that the chrome orange shade was more popular for backgrounds and accents, but many quilters made good use of the bright, clear canary yellow.

Chrome yellow could be bought as a solid or a print.

Pennsylvania, end of the 19th century.

The color was important in Pennsylvania German design, which emphasized bright next to bright.

So we see many Pennsylvania quilts using the color.

Block about 1840-60

Quilters all over the country used it, however.

The chrome yellow process was developed early in the 19th century, but we really don't start seeing a lot of it until the 1840s when it became important for applique and piecing.

It's difficult to determine whether a print is 1860 or 1890.

The common combinations were red and black (dark brown) figures on yellow grounds.

The major difference between mid-century prints and those from the end of the 19th-century is that the later prints became more standardized. There just wasn't a lot of variety. Mills printed the same design in the same color for decades, marketing them as old-fashioned calicoes.

Top from the 1940s?

Apron from the 1960s or 1970s.

The yellow prints were almost the same for a hundred years.

But then... they stopped printing them about 1980.

Until now!

Reproduction of a classic yellow print 1860-1980

Here's a reproduction of a 1960s interpretation of the old prints---

 a repro of a repro that Moda and I are doing in a collection of

Old Fashioned Calicoes.

Start thinking canary and click here.

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_old_fashioned_calicoes.pdf