Bird in Air

"Made at Westport Town

I'm 'Bird in Air'

Sleep under me

And banish care.

Salome Thorpe

7168 pieces"

Bird in Air by Salome Thorpe, Collection of

the International Quilt Study Center & Museum.

Date attributed 1880-1900

Salome Thorpe was one of those rare quilters who recorded the name of her pattern on her quilt. We might call her one piece quilt Broken Dishes or Windmill but she called it "Bird in Air." I looked the four-patch up in BlockBase and found many other names published in the past 120 years or so.

The oldest published name seems to be Windmill in the Ohio Farmer in 1898.

Salome's quilt also illustrates how little we know about pattern names in the 19th century.

But like her, we tend to think of these triangles as birds of some kind from geese to hens to doves.

When I did a search for the word Bird in BlockBase I found many patterns, some quite literally birds

and others with a variety of symbolic geometrics. 

Pat Nickols Collection at the Mingei Museum

"The Basket By AG Ellison Age 9 yrs 1853"

Sometimes the name on the quilt is

exactly the name we'd call it. Thank you very much, Amanda Grace.

See more about Salome and her quilt at the IQSC website here:

http://www.quiltstudy.org/collections/quilt_of_the_month/2006.html

It was their Block of the Month in March, 2006.

And A(manda) G(race) Ellison's quilt is cataloged here at the Mingei Museum:

http://www.mingei.org/collectionobject/signature-quilt-pieced-and-appliqued-ellison/

A little more about her:

http://brooklyncentre.com/trees/getperson.php?personID=I39427&tree=Brainard

And about her sad end in 1915. The article is from the Brookfield Courier.

http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper4/Brookfield%20NY%20Courier/Brookfield%20NY%20Courier%201913%20-%201915%20grayscale.pdf/Brookfield%20NY%20Courier%201913%20-%201915%20grayscale%20-%200602.pdf