QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Thursday, June 30, 2016

Rosenberg Quilt Collection-University of Alberta

Patriotic Quilt
Rosenberg Collection
University of Alberta


Celebrate Canada Day on July 1 with quilts from the University of Alberta in Canada. They have a spectacular collection of Canadian quilts donated by Toronto quilt dealer Gloria Rosenberg ten years ago.










Here's the database.
I went through it at 30 quilts to a page, files with photos only and there were 25 pages to peruse.

http://collections.museums.ualberta.ca/cltx/

Read an interview with Rosenberg:
http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=bf85dce7-de31-4042-b339-7f404a8070a9

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Morris Earthly Paradise Project & Kit


For each fabric collection we do at Moda we have a Project pattern. The project for Morris Earthly Paradise is a 75-inch square quilt that includes pieced stars and simple applique.

Morris Earthly Paradise
75" x 75"
Available as a project sheet or a kit.
See the catalog sheet here:

This design has many mothers. The final version is a collaboration between Moda designer Carrie Nelson and me. I sent Carrie the suggestion below. She added smaller stars and a less-static border.


My inspiration was a quilt that Karla Menaugh, Jean Stanclift
and I designed years ago for our Sunflower Pattern Co-operative.

Jacobean Meadow had 13 stars and 12 applique blocks.

Jean made our model in fabrics from the first line Terry Thompson
and I did for Moda called Floral Trails.


Our inspiration in turn was a vintage English applique.

I can't remember where we found the photo.
The picture below is the only one I have.
We loved the primitive applique and the wild border.

We weren't the only people with a picture of this quilt on our bulletin boards.
Kim McLean was inspired to create her very popular version
Stars & Sprigs

Stars & Sprigs by Kim McLean

I bet some of you had a photo of that English quilt on your bulletin boards too.


Saturday, June 25, 2016

Morris Hexathon 8: Greenwood


Morris Hexathon 8: Greenwood by Bettina Havig

Greenwood is a single diamond shape: 12 of them.

Greenwood by Ilyse Moore

Greenwood by Becky Brown

Becky fussy-cut a tulip shape from the Compton print in Morris Earthly Paradise to give the curved look here. There are no curved seams this week.

Compton by John Henry Dearle

The diamond

A Victorian tile floor at St. Albans

The block set with red triangles about 1900

I named this basic block Greenwood for a mythical place, a symbol of the English forest. Greenwood refers to the Anglo-Saxon culture before the invasion of the Norman French in 1066. The image is in classic British literature from Robin Hood to Shakespeare---half of a dichotomy:
  • Forest and city
  • Anglo-Saxon and Norman
  • Ancient and Modern
  • Freedom and Authority
 William Morris spent his childhood near the Epping Forest, a landscape that seduced him with a "ferocious enchantment". That two-sided view of the world shaped Morris's life and work. 


The pattern is BlockBase #239, and variations have different numbers
as there are so many ways of looking at the 12 diamonds.

From the Tennessee project; photo from the Quilt Index.
A typical silk example date-inscribed 1876

with a very atypical back.
The label (the same size as the quilt) says: 
1876
 Franz(?) C Smith
Elkhart Co. Ind.


Here's a version from the 1930s set all over.

Early-20th-century example, set with triangles.

About 1940 from Cindy's Antiques
If you are careful with your coloring you
get a 3-D illusion.



The Ladies Art Company showed it as an all-over
diamond pattern and called it Variegated Diamonds...

and also fit it into a rectangle and called it Hexagonal.

Pattern for an 8" Hexagon
(4" sides)

To Print:
  • Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11". 
  • Click on the image above. 
  • Right click on it and save it to your file. 
  • Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". The hexagon should measure 4" on the sides.
  • Adjust the printed page size if necessary.
  • Add seams when you cut the fabric.


Marnie had a date question about this large version fit
into a rectangle, Could it be from about 1800? Could be,
those are some o-o-old prints.

This is another hexie example were quilts in the design were made earlier than the paper patterns.

A British medallion with the pattern in the borders, date-inscribed
1808, in the collection of the International Quilt Study Group and Museum.

We see it in silks in the last half of the 19th century.

This variation is set all over in velvets.


It was also done often in calico scraps.
Above and below
cheater cloth, printed patchwork, from about 1875.


A top date-inscribed 1945


An unusual set, dated 1909


One More Inspiration

Circle of Stars from Kaffe Fassett's 
Simple Shapes-Spectacular Quilts

Epping Forest is the largest green space in London. Visit Morris's childhood Greenwood:

Thursday, June 23, 2016

An Indiana Pattern?

I remember this quilt that we documented in the Kansas Quilt Project
very well. It is signed in bold applique "Mary A. Turley 1869"
It's certainly an unusual pattern.
It's in my Encyclopedia of Applique, #44.9, but up till recently this was the only 
example I'd seen.

The two-way mirror image symmetry is interesting as is the layering of the pink and red feathery flowers. 

Nancy Hornback did a good deal of research on the quiltmaker, finding Mary A. Turley (1854-1917) probably made the quilt in Indiana before coming to Kansas to marry Levi Morgan in 1871. She stitched the quilt at 15 and married at 17. 

Mary was born in Marion County, Indiana, in what is now a suburb of Indianapolis.

See a little more about how the Turleys came from Virginia to Indiana at this site:
http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/turley/1216/

When I saw this one documented by the Iowa Project I made a note. Twins!

This top belonged to Mary Barton, a famous collector in Iowa.
Coxcomb by Alice Rose Klein (Mrs. Madison C. Klein) of Indiana.

Perhaps this is the maker:
"Alice Rose Smith, daughter of Squire and Sarah Smith, was born in Marion Co. Ind. Oct. 3, 1853. was married Oct. 25, 1871, to Mat Klein who was born in Delaware Co. Ind. Oct 6, 1848. 75 There have been born to Alice Rose and Mat Klein 3 children, namely: May, Harry and Russell Madison. Alice Rose and Mat Klein are living in Crawfordsville, Ind. and Mr. Klein is engaged in the jewelry trade."

"The year following his coming to Crawfordsville, [1870]Mr. [Madison Conard] Klein married and his wife, Alice Rose Klein, a son Charles Harry Klein, a daughter Alice Mae Klein and granddaughter, Katherine May Klein, survive him."

If so we have two similar quilts made by women born a year apart in Marion County, Indiana. An Indiana pattern?


But here's one from the Tennessee project.
Triplets!
Actually Quadruplets!

 http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-835


The Tennessee quilt was made by a Mrs. Ottinger in Parrottsville. The owner who brought the quilt to be photographed said she purchased it and that she had another one like it.

From the notes:
"There is another quilt identical to this one, but it is in very poor condition. This one is unused with the pencil markings for quilting lines still visible. Unusual applique design and an unusual quilting design used in this quilt. The quilt is longer (104 inches)than most quilts in this time period in Tennessee."

Ottinger is a common name in Parrottsville. I even found a tintype of someone's Aunt Mary Ottinger from Parrottsville, sold on an online auction.

Maybe it's a Tennessee pattern.

Are there any more out there?