Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: September 2024

Friday, September 13, 2024

Linsey Quilts 2: Regional?

Linsey quilt pieced of squares and rectangles of

linsey fabric, documented by the Arizona project---

from a family with Kentucky roots

In the last post we looked at patchwork quilts pieced of older fabrics woven from wool and cotton or linen yarns, colloquially called linsey-woolsey and in the U.S. Upland South usually called linsey. Over at our Facebook group 6KnowitAlls:ShowUsYourQuilts we saw a good variety and learned something about how regional they are.

The last post: Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Linsey Quilts 1: Identification

We'll try to answer our remaining questions about linsey in this post.

Was weaving linsey cloth regional?
Was cutting up linsey fabric to make quilts regional?
Was linsey factory made?
What is homespun about linsey?

Perhaps a last portrait of grandma, wearing a linsey

striped garment?

Linsey cloth was a staple of early 19th-century American textiles, woven at home for family use or family income or in small "factories" of a few weavers. Clothing fashioned from linsey seems to survive primarily in petticoats, worn under lighter skirts for warmth or worn as a dirt-resistant work garment.

Amy Barrick bought this petticoat in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Source???

Pam Weeks, curator at the New England Quilt Museum, has seen the petticoats in New England; Merikay Waldvogel has seen them in Tennessee and there seem to be no regional style differences.

The red crocheted lace on this one Pam saw at a New England sale is a bit alarming...

Is this the same petticoat from an old ebay listing?

The major difference in their flea market finds is that Pam and the New England weaving authorities find no patchwork linsey quilts at those New England sales whereas sales in Kentucky and Tennessee might yield a pieced quilt.

"I was quizzing the [New England] linen experts on linsey woolsey, which they say was never used in quilts." Pam

Barb Vedder's photo of a linsey strip quilt from New York she

saw in Rabbit Goody's workshop.

Weaving expert Rabbit Goody did a workshop at the AQSG seminar last week and showed her New York-found linsey quilts including this one. New Yorkers are NOT New Englanders, so apparently they made bedcovers of patchwork linsey and other wool pieces.

Was cutting up linsey fabric to make quilts regional?

Recorded by the Tennessee project, attributed to Margaret Burdine

Connatser of Sevier County, Tennessee

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=22-18-1047

These quilts pieced of rough, utilitarian fabrics do seem to be regional, usually from the upland South of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. I would guess you can count on that as a clue to origin--- There are always exceptions but a pretty reliable clue. And then there is New York.

Rough idea of where linsey quilts were made---the upland South and places

like Missouri and Indiana where those people migrated.

Nancy Miller Grider lived from 1883 to 1960 in Rowan County, Kentucky.

When did she piece this medallion out of wool & cotton weave scraps?

Perhaps the most famous linsey quilt is the one on the cover of the Kentucky project's book published about forty years ago. See Nancy Miller Grider's quilt at the Quilt Index:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1A-39-1D3

Questions continue---why the regional differences?

Lifestyle was quite different in industrial New England and agricultural mountain states.

This 1860 transportation map may explain it. Home-produced cloth was within the reach of many; the factory-produced cottons transported in all those red lines in New England and the upper midwest was not as available. You made bedcovers out of what you had, even if people living in the well-served areas thought the rough fabric was inappropriate for patchwork. This is a pre-Civil War map. Some areas became even more isolated and much poorer after the war.

Was linsey factory made?
What is homespun about linsey?

We tend to use the word homespun with no thought to the actual production history of a fabric. We like to fit textile history into the American myth, which often tells us about "hardy pioneers" and "old New England stock" who supplied their own needs within an agricultural economy.

American mythmaking reveres "homespun" often assigning the name to factory spun and woven cloth. Woven plaids, checks and striped fabric may indeed be homespun but one must look at the fiber content to be accurate.

Cotton is difficult to spin into yarn by hand. One reason the English and the northeastern United States dominated the cotton market is they developed machinery efficient at spinning cotton yarns. Many pieces of linsey ~~(wool warps crossed with cotton yarns)~~ (oops- UPDATE: Merikay points out my error; it's cotton warps crossed with wool yarns) used factory-spun cottons and the weaver's own homespun wools. Cloth that is cotton warp and cotton weft is not going to logically be "homespun." But even if only the wool is home sourced we can probably call some of this fabric homespun because the wool was.

But, much factory cloth was "linsey." Alden O'Brien of the DAR Museum found a description of South Carolina fashion from Rhode Island merchant Isaac P. Hazard in the 1830s when he contrasted the Carolina hand-woven warps versus New England's factory yarns: “Many of the country small planters dress in just such Walnut Linseys as we make except that the warp is coarser being spun by hand.”

Petticoat

Alden also noted Rhode Island mill owner William Davis's sale of factory-made linseys to a Baltimore merchant in 1838 ranging "in quality from 18 to 24 cents per yard...black and white, red and blue, 'mixed,' and plaid, heavy and even for linseys and well calculated for the Southern trade."

Home woven or factory produced? To confuse us further: An 1888 ad from a Mount Airy, North Carolina mill telling of a complicated system in which the sheep farmer brought in her sheared wool; they supplied the factory-spun cotton warp and delivered cloth from your own sheep.

Years ago Kim Leggett sent me photos of a two-sided,

tied linsey bedcover in her collection.

Collection of Virginia's Historic Crab Orchard Museum

For the exhibit Homefront & Battlefield ten years ago

curators Madelyn Shaw and Lynne Bassett borrowed this

linsey nine-patch attributed to two enslaved seamstresses recalled

as Martha and Sarah of Stony Point, Tennessee.

Linsey undersleeves under a printed plaid cotton garment?

"The maids here dress in linsey-woolsey gowns and white aprons in the winter—and in summer, blue homespun. These deep blue dresses and white turbans and aprons are picturesque and nice looking."

Mary Boykin Chesnut describing dress at her husband's family plantation in South Carolina before war's end.

When were the linsey quilts pieced? Merikay believes most were made after the war when times were tough and the durable cloth remained available. Sue Young of Mississippi above used home-woven cloth; many must have resorted to cutting squares and rectangles from unfashionable garments.

Further Reading:

Madelyn Shaw, Slave Cloth and Clothing Slaves: Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Industry, MESDA Journal, 2021–2022, Vol 42–43.
https://www.mesdajournal.org/2012/slave-cloth-clothing-slaves-craftsmanship-commerce-industry/

Posts on linsey:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/10/linsey-civil-war-souvenirs.html
https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/02/confederate-quilts.html
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/07/calimanco-quilts.html

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Linsey Quilts 1: Identification

Merikay Waldvogel Collection

Over at the 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYourQuilts Facebook page we showed Linsey-Woolsey quilts in the month of August. Scroll down to see a link to the page and ask to be a member. We'll let you in!

We saw many quilts ---well---not too many as they are rather unusual and people don't recognize them when they see them. We relied on Merikay Waldvogel's 1987 article “Southern Linsey Quilts” in Uncoverings Volume 8 (available online at the Quilt Index, but photos are not included---link at bottom of page.) However, the same article WITH color photos was published in Quiltmaking Beyond the Myths: Selected Writings from the American Quilt Study Group. Look for it online.

Merikay is our Know It Alls Expert on the topic.

She wrote about this one: "A Linsey quilt I’ve owned since 1985. My husband found it being used as a rug in a dirt-floor cabin in Blount County. He was helping a friend move out of the cabin and the friend told Jerry he could have it. It has striped linsey, but also a lot of solid blue … called “janes” and some solid brown which some folks have said might be similar to fabric used in Confederate soldiers’ jackets. I still have a lot of questions about Southern linsey quilts....unusual in that it is a pieced pattern and there has been minimal fraying and seams pulling apart."

A little photoshopping to emphasize what they are using for a rug.

Looks like a linsey quilt to me.

The sturdiness of a quilt surviving use as a rug is one characteristic of the linsey quilt. The stuff (as they used to call wool) is durable.

Paula Cochrane showed us one of a few she owns, this

one a tied crazy. The irregular pattern here is something more typical

of the crazy quilt era "after 1880" than before. Some of the fabrics are probably

decades older. I color corrected and squared up her photo a bit.

We had a few goals for the month---we'll address the first one in this post.

How to recognize linsey quilts
Was weaving linsey cloth regional?
Was cutting up linsey fabric to make quilts regional?
Was linsey factory made?
What is homespun about linsey?

How to Recognize Linsey Quilts

Verbal Description:
Linsey or Linsey-Woolsey is a combination of wool and linen or cotton. Look for the white yarns to identify linsey. The linen or cotton is often left uncolored, but it can be dyed. Before machine spun cotton yarns were widely available (say about 1840) the combination was linen and wool---hence the name "linsey-woolsey." After cotton yarn was a common American product the combination was cotton crossed with wool---but the name remained "linsey."

We are visual people and contributors offered several examples to help us.

Marjorie Childress collection

Marjorie has only one linsey quilt and here it is---

very typical in patchwork of squares, although

some squares contain irregular piecing.

Weaving experts explained the warp/weft conventions:

Suzanne McDowell: "While stronger [than cotton] the best linen thread was likely used as warp for personal garments (as in next to body) … once cotton spun yarn became widely available it replaced linen as the warp in linsey woolsey… the name did not change in most cases…

Carol Cook: "The warp should be stronger and usually has less stretch or 'give' in the finished fabric which is why quilters like the lengthwise straight of grain for the long border strips. Less likelihood of 'wavy' borders.

Lynn Lancaster Gorges showed a piece she believed to be all wool, wool warp, wool weft---not linsey.

Sharon Waddell showed two from her collection, both with triangle

piecing---cutting diagonally across that weave would provide some

piecing challenges.

Hines family, North Carolina

Quilt in the collection of the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina

State University, gift of Kathlyn Sullivan who has collected North Carolina quilts.

Much striped and checked linsey in the center area.

Notes from Kathy:

"The fabric is home-loomed ... a triumph of gathering the wool and cotton fibers, then carding, spinning, dyeing and weaving them—all by hand—before the actual cutting, sewing, and quilting could begin. The center portion is made from a catchall of leftover home-loomed garment scraps and/or carefully salvaged areas of worn out clothing. It is framed with blue and orange wool checkerboard squares that give the quilt a pleasant graphic design. Made for warmth, this quilt also has wool batting between its scratchy outer layers. There are more than twenty different fabrics in various weights and coarseness, hand quilted in long stitches."

http://searchgreggcollection.arts.ncsu.edu/mDetail.aspx...

Farmworker's shirt from Historic Deerfield

Before the age of cotton the combination fabric was commonly used for clothing. In the U.S. we find many linsey petticoats really not meant to show but utility clothing to use for work and to keep one warm.

From Merikay's 1987 Uncoverings paper.

Two linsey petticoats made at the Blair Farm in Loudon County, Tennessee. N. Susan Blair (1846-1927) is wearing a linsey petticoat to feed her chickens.

Online auction

CDV from Merikay's collection

" Name on back: Mrs. Liveston. Under her lightweight silk dress is a striped linsey petticoat. Probably from East Tennessee. The dress style was dated to ca. 1860 by Virginia Gunn."

"I don’t know for a fact, but I’d like to think she is proudly revealing her linsey petticoat to show her pride in making do despite war shortages."

Metropolitan Museum of Art

from Peggy Westerfield's textile collection

Linsey dresses also served as everyday outerwear. As late as 1866 Abba Alcott (Marmee in Little Women) noted that daughter Louisa was living at home in Massachusetts and making her a linsey-woolsey dress. The red dress here from Theriault's Auctions.

In her mid-60s (and never a slave to fashion) Abba was probably grateful for a practical gown. But as the century passed linsey clothing became increasingly undesirable, a badge of class. In 1805 Lucy Bakewell Audubon complained about her Dutch and Swiss women servants in Pennsylvania:

"How people forget their former situations. When they came here they were thankful for linsey gowns and now though my Papa bought each of them a printed cotton, yet nothing would do but a white dimity..." Quoted in Carolyn Delatte, Lucy Audubon: A Biography.

Kay Triplett noted that Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897), who escaped slavery in the 1850s, retained "A vivid recollection of the linsey-woolsey dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery.”

From Lynn Lancaster Gorges's collection

See Merikay's Uncoverings paper:

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=page&kid=35-90-100

Lengths of linsey in a quilt from a Slotin Auction sale.

The other side. Which is the top and which the back?

Join our Facebook group 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYourQuilts:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1413180019082731

Read past posts on linsey:

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/03/linsey-woolsey-quilts.html

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-slave-made-quilt.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/08/ann-knoxs-linsey-quilt.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/09/another-view-of-ann-knoxs-quilt.html

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-slave-made-quilt.html

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Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Jugate Portrait Bandanas = Quilts

Garfield/Arthur political quilt with a jugate bandana as centerpiece,

about 1880, once in Shelly Zegart's inventory.

Attributed to Annie Ensminger Kready (1871-1956)/

Louisa Ensminger (1850-1899), Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

The center is known to collectors as a Jugate Bandana.

Jugate comes from the Latin---joined or overlapping as in the portraits. It’s also used in botany to describe paired leaves, fruit, etc. Bandana is a word we are more familiar with; it comes from India and generally meant a tied cloth. The word still describes its uses, a handkerchief, head or neck scarf.

Same 1880 campaign; different bandana

The 1880 Presidential campaign seems to have seen the beginning of the

political bandana fashion.

Winning pair: Garfield/Arthur 1880

Twin portraits on paper were nothing new but campaign fabric

was innovative, particularly the bandana handkerchiefs.

1880 to 1904 were the years when they were a standard political trinket. Their introduction in 1880 begins when American textile printers adopted technology for rather inexpensive Turkey red dyeing. The Cochrane family was the chief technical innovator.