Extreme Show Off Piecing: Rose Tree

Rose Tree, Missouri Rose or Prairie Flower,

 mid-19th-century from an online auction

Once Bets Ramsey and Merikay Waldvogel realized in the Quilts of Tennessee project that some of the rose quilts we assumed to be appliqued were actually pieced they began looking closely for seams. Surprisingly, they found that a few of these quilts we might call Rose Tree are pieced.

This detail shows how the pattern can be pieced into a circle.

Here's a quilt now in Texas (in the collection of the American/International Quilt Association)
that shows how the circles were then pieced into the background.

Two details from the Tennessee project.

I've seen perhaps a dozen pieced rose trees over the years. My digital picture file contains quilts primarily from Tennessee and Texas. The Quilt Index files from the Quilts of Tennessee project are a good source as are the files from the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin: Winedale Quilt Collection.

Few of the variations are all pieced, some are all applique and some are a combination. Some come with a pot or a tree trunk.

 There are often nine blocks as in this one from an online auction. It has a nice balance with a pieced (?) rose in the center.

From the photos it looks like some of it is pieced, some applique. See the seams in the center of the rose here and the way the top of the tree trunk has a curved seam.

These floral trees are numbered 44 in my Encyclopedia of Applique. The names published in the 20th century include

Conventional Tulip - Marguerite Ickis
Rose and Buds - Nancy Cabot
Prairie Flower - Carlie Sexton
Missouri Rose - Hall and Kretsinger
Rose Tree - Kretsinger

This pattern typifies the problems with 20th-century published names. We can't assume they were used in the 19th century by the women who made the quilts.

Jane Shelby, 1855

Mississippi Beauty

The Texas Sesquicentennial Quilt Association's Texas Quilt Search found an appliqued variation inscribed with these words:

"Mississippi Beauty
Judith Connor's Quilt
Persented [sic] by  Jane Shelby
Feb. 10, 1855"

See more of the Mississippi Beauty at the Quilt Index:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4F-88-CA

Two others:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-C21
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4F-88-9A

Detail of a Texas quilt by Susan Bell Miller at the Briscoe Center

Rose Kretsinger's New Rose Tree from the Spencer Museum, about 1930. This one is all appliqued.
http://collection.spencerart.ku.edu/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=11181&viewType=detailView


The International Quilt Study Center and Museum has a few in their collection:
Here's one dated 1892 (#2007.038.0011)
http://cdn.firespring.com/images/1ffcb1ad-2213-4569-ab47-f254a73622d3.jpg


Another dated example, 1857 by Eliza J. Herron (1997.007.0908)
 http://cdn.firespring.com/images/397308df-f80f-42b3-9042-dbc5377dcb69.jpg


They also have one  from the 1930s (1997.007.0820)
http://cdn.firespring.com/images/69d12cc6-abd1-4e90-b147-3b806fafe8a9.jpg

Rose Tree from an online auction.

The central roses and the buds could be pieced

but the leaves are probably all appliqued.

And blogger Barbara Chainey has pictures of one in Patricia Cox's collection.
http://barbarachaineyquilts.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/a-few-more-details/

See my post about the pieced roses here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/06/show-off-piecing-whig-rose.html