Mysterious Visuals in Indigo Whole Cloth Quilts

                                                                      

Both the Winterthur & the International Quilt Museums own quilted whole cloth* bedcovers with large center panels of the same printed indigo resist design of a pineapple/bromeliad/artichoke type of plant. Each was bordered probably at a later time; the Winterthur's with a popular cactus print from the 1830s in yellow; IQM's with a "Flying Geese" pieced border of smaller indigo prints.

Inner borders on both are a small vine and a stripe.

The high-end furnishing fabric company Brunschwhig & Fils working with the Winterthur Museum reproduced the print in the 1990's as "Bromelia Resist" and included the vining edge stripe so we can guess what the striped vine might have looked like.

Brunschwhig & Fils repro---3 colorways

The DAR Museum has an indigo resist, whole cloth bedcover in a pheasant print with the same edge design. (All these whole cloth bedcovers seem to be "18th century.")

The Met owns another bird print with the same edge.

Historic Deerfield has a small fragment in the

 pheasant fabric with a barely visible vining edge. Is it the same edge?

A peacock blue resist curtain from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

The New Jersey project recorded this leafy print with apparently three borders

 although the white and yellow florals seem to have been

laid atop the blue print rather than being pieced in. Three finished

quilts combined?

Decades ago author Florence Pettit showed a similar edge on a different print

in a textile from a New York museum.

Bill Volckening's Collection

And here's what appears to be the same edge on another print in a whole cloth bedcover that Bill

describes as "Applied binding, blue resist whole cloth quilt, c. 1760-1800."

Nine bedcovers of 7 different  blue resist prints with the same vining edge.

Visual coincidences mean something, but I do not know what ----YET.

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* "Whole cloth" bedcovers or quilts refers to the use of fabric in a single design as the theme. These fabrics are usually pieced together ---sometimes in two long narrow strips, sometimes in smaller pieces.

The Rhode Island project recorded this quilt in the

same print as the one in the Volckening collection. 

Added lines show where three lengths of cloth are visible in the photo.

Does it have an edge? Can't see from the photo.