QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Saturday, August 23, 2025

Abominable Tariffs #3: The De Minimis Import Tax Exemption

 

Art Square by Jeanne Arnieri


The De Minimis Tariff Exemption expires soon.

 The De Minimis Exemption!?!?

Hard to understand....


... but it will affect you IF
you sell your artwork or goods across international borders or buy
 artwork or goods from other countries.

Last month you might have decided to buy a small quilted piece from an Etsy artist like Kayleigh Excell of Clevedon, United Kingdom. Here's one of her landscapes listed then for $451. Being under $800 your purchase would have qualified for the "Under $800 Exemption (de minimis) and you would have paid no tariff tax on the piece of art and Kayleigh wouldn't have had to bother with tax forms.

Seems practical.


That exemption benefitting artists, small businesses and the customers who supported them and enjoyed their work ends on August 29th. International trade at this small level will now be more complicated and expensive.



Mandy Patullo lives in Northern England. Her lovely pieces go for about $100.

Recent note from British pattern company to US residents:

"The United States administration is suspending the trade threshold below which US customers would be exempt from customs duties on imported goods. What this is looking to mean is that, in the next 6 months, if you buy a physical sewing pattern or book from us that requires shipping, you may be charged an additional $80. 


Obviously, this is the last thing we want for our lovely customers across the pond! Not to mention the impact it is going to have upon us as a small business…. If you've been thinking about ordering any printed sewing patterns from us, we would highly recommend you place your order in the next few days to avoid this charge."

UPDATE: A DAY LATER
Knowing little about international shipping I was rather shocked to see that our international trading partners have suspended shipping of any kind of package to the United States in anticipation of the suspension of the de Minimis exemption. No more fabric or patterns being sold to US customers. I didn't see this coming---but then again I don't make US trade policy. Didn't anybody see this coming?
-----
Michelle in the comments asks: 
"I've received quite a few emails from British designers who have said they will no longer be shipping to the U.S. I'm wondering if there might be a loophole for pdf patterns? I haven't found an answer for that. Can you share if you do?"

I sell my patterns as PDFs on Etsy (US Postal Service too unreliable for actual paper shipping.) I looked up Etsy's policies on the new import taxes and the sentences that apply:
"Tariffs apply to physical items, so digital listings are not subject to additional tariffs. Note that other taxes may apply."

Note: "Other taxes may apply"


Jeanne Arnieri has made a top with 12 of the projected 20 Tariffs & Troubles blocks---No Template Cutting is her rule this week.

Prior Posts on Import Taxes

Free Trade by Jeanne Arnieri


Fort Sumter by Jeanne Arnieri




Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Abominable Tariffs:#2: Civil War

Tariffs paid a significant amount of government expense before the income tax became the government's major permanent support with the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913.

                                              

Tariffs are a tax on the customer who spends money.
Economist Robert Reich prefers the term "Import Taxes," which is easier to understand than
"Tariffs." But that's the point. Those advocating "Tariffs" don't want you to understand.




Income taxes tax those who earn money. A graduated income tax means the more one makes the higher the percentage and the higher the amount paid to the treasury.

Tariffs: "Infant industries cry for it," 1921
"As of [August 7th], import taxes (aka tariffs) have hit their highest level since the Great Depression. Americans are now expected to pay an average of 18.3% more for imported products." Robert Reich.
Tariffs are hyped as a benefit for domestic industry---encouraging and protecting American manufacturers. When foreign goods cost too much, domestic production should increase because, "We can do it cheaper."

We err when we think of the current administration as full of smarmy idiots.

Rather, they are smarmy ideologues with an old agenda favoring the rich
who do not like to pay income taxes.

1890,  McKinley & Import Taxes

Lessons from history illustrate the problems with tariffs.

President William McKinley dispensing tariff tonic to residents of
a psych ward, cartoon from 1897


In the early-19th century the North and the South fought over many moral and economic policies, particularly slavery. Tariffs were a matter of serious dispute too. Northerners with their newly built factories favored tariffs but the agricultural South, which bought much from the rest of the world, abhorred the taxes. 



Cotton remains an agricultural mainstay in the American South

Demagogue John C. Calhoun made a political career out of what he called the Tariff of Abominations in the 1820s. (That's what demagogues do---make a career out of hot-button issue with overblown rhetoric.) Thirty years later the South persisted in feeling marginalized by tariffs that benefitted the industrial North.

Mid-century Southern-leaning cartoon---still smarting 
25 years later over South Carolina's Calhoun
losing the political game on tariffs in 1832 to
King Andy Jackson..

Resentment over differing economic interests and a good deal of 
fire-eating demagoguery led to the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 
and the beginning of a 5-year Civil War.

The first post on tariffs:


Thursday, August 14, 2025

Abominable Tariffs:#1 Free Trade

 

Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilts #1137 

Free Trade versus Tariffs? International trade is an economic concept not easy to understand. Having been in the fabric business for over 30 years and an amateur historian I thought I might try to explain what is going on in the rag trade with tariffs. I'll do a few posts here with history illustrated by some vintage cartoons and relevant quilt blocks from my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilts and its digital companion BlockBase+. You could make a pieced sampler quilt with the blocks to record the interesting times we are currently enduring.

"Crowning the Abomination"
1897 Cartoon by Darymple in Puck magazine depicting
"Tariffs" as a giant devilish king with a patchwork cape made of
varying taxes on various products.


Why "Crowning the Abomination?" The artist was satirizing South Carolina's 
overdramatic Senator John C. Calhoun's term for the Tariff of 1828 


Tariffs----domestic taxes on imported goods---have been related to two extremely unpleasant events in American history: the Civil War and the Great Depression. What next!

I know little about the economics of the 1930s Great Depression. I'll let Stephen Colbert and his writers speak about tariffs in the 1930s and today.
They raise import taxes to the highest level since the Great Depression. Never a great sign. Never a great sign to be compared to the worst thing ever.” — STEPHEN COLBERT

I'm not adding actual patterns for these sampler blocks.
They are relatively easy to draw and
 Hey, Why don't you have BlockBase+
that will draw them for you any size????


New York Times graph with addition

We quiltmakers are concerned about the current tariffs on cotton fabrics,
 taxes on us customers who are now paying more for
 our stash than we did a year ago.
The basic argument over the centuries: "Tariffs or Free Trade."

American Tariffs of 1828 meant the death of "Free Trade" between nations.


Retailer Jill Cherry, whose Modern Quilt Co. Facebook page has thousands of followers, did a post a few months ago about the economic aspects of the recent tariffs on printed cotton imports from countries like Japan, Korea and India who manufacture the fabric she sells and you buy. Reading the comments after she announced that her sales reps told her fabric prices are going up made me realize many of her customers have no idea how cotton is manufactured, what tariffs are or how they are going to affect our fabric budgets.


Who can blame them? Economics has long been known as the "dismal science." It's BORING and really not easy to understand since it's often based on contradictory theories. However, as quiltmakers we should understand some basics about the economics of fabric production, which I will try to explain in this post through a couple of Jill's customer comments. I'll try here and in the next few posts to outline how tariffs work, the damage they've caused in the past and how the new taxes will affect the cotton market.

Drama in an American mill in a 1927 movie

Comment #1: Is any [quilt] fabric made in U.S.?
Jill: "Not that I sell." 


A commenter who apparently thought she might be helpful directed us to this website headed: "Best 15 Quilt Fabric Manufacturers in USA You Need 2025"
https://fandafabrics.com/quilt-fabric-manufacturers-in-usa/
There you will find the names of familiar companies. Like much of the internet this website is a big fat LIE. If you don't want to be fooled you have to analyze information. The American companies listed there import cotton fabric from foreign manufacturers and wholesale it in the U.S.

Don't just believe it because you want to. 
WE DO NOT PRODUCE QUILT-QUALITY COTTON PRINTS IN THE U.S.



Comment #2: Maybe some of these companies will ship some production stateside.

Mary: I know that’s the notion people have but that’s just not feasible. Not only would it take years to create a plant to do that job we would still pay the higher prices because workers here expect to be paid much more. Any savings would be years away and would evaporate due to costs of doing business.

Me: Not going to happen. We cannot grow high-quality cotton here. We abandoned our own infrastructure thirty or forty years ago to let the rest of the world print with modern technology.

Comment #3: Hoping the short term pain leads to long term gain.

Krystal: Very unlikely outcome. The President and those around him seem to have a complete lack of understanding about how manufacturing actually happens as well as how global supply chains work. This is in addition to their complete lack of understanding about what a tariff actually is. A tariff is a TAX on American consumers.

Me: What would be a good long-term gain? We are not going to start printing quiltmakers' cotton that  we grow here. Over the posts in the next few weeks I'll cover more history, agriculture and economics to explain why tariffs have the consequences they do. And show you a few more pieced blocks.


UPDATE: Reading this I fear I am implying that the current administration is full of bumbling idiots---
this is indeed true, but do not think this tariff conflict is naiveite or confusion. 
Tariffs VS. Income Taxes: It's a balance and guess which way the scale will tilt?




Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Embroidered Letters---Commercial Sources


"Labor of Love" or a "Consumer Trend?

Crazy Quilts, especially the really elaborate and skillfully
 embroidered pieces, have long been considered
 the pinnacle of late-19th-century handwork. 


How those women could sew!


A couple of years ago I discovered an aspect of crazy quilt history that reminded me of my realization that there was no Santa Claus when I was six. Louise Tiemann and I wrote an article for the American Quilt Study Group's Blanket Statements newsletter #152 "­­Commercial Machine Embroidery in Crazy Quilts." Our conclusion: Many of those birds, florals and cats were purchased, machine-embroidered patches that one could buy to incorporate into a crazy quilt.

Note the brownish outline around the bird, stitches attaching the "slip" to the silk.


Hummingbirds (?) with speckled breasts: 2 Different Quilts

A good many of those embroidered vignettes were purchased and what's more---they were machine-embroidered. Kursheedt's in New York was one of the big commercial sources for the pictorials. They held the patents on the embroidery machines.
"If ladies have no time to embroider...they will find the Kursheedt's embroidered color silk appliques most convenient."


 

"Mother" probably died in 1880; her memorial stitched later with
some trendy purchases among the patchwork.
 
Over at our 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYour Quilts Facebook page we were looking at inscriptions last month and discovered something as a group. The elaborate monograms and dates on some crazy quilts also could be purchased in various forms. One could buy a stencil, a template or a machine-embroidered letter finished on a piece of silk taffeta or velvet.

A felt or flannel (?) letter to embroider around.
A Template

Textile dealer Nancy Hahn had just purchased some:
"Crowley's Fibre Letter Foundations,"Crowley's Department Stores in Chicago and Detroit, 1920-1950. I made a few completed samples to display, as I'm selling the individual monograms in my antique shop. I basted the forms onto my background fabric and then hand stitched a satin stitch using pearl cotton. After experimenting with the 1st one, they became easier to do and each looked better than the last."

These are forms or templates that one could embroider over while attaching them to a background. 

But---like the hummingbird above: Could you buy finished initials either as slips to attach to a background or as finished machine embroidery on a fabric background to cut to fit in your crazy quilt?

I searched in newspapers, magazines and online auctions for words like: "monogram---initial---crazy quilt" and found two copies of this catalog The Initial House from G. Reis and Bro. who would sell you embroidered monogram initials, which is probably what we have been seeing on crazy quilts for years, believing the quiltmaker stitched them.

"Nora Sister (18)86"

Once you know the words to search for you find a lot of evidence for the existence of machine-sewn letters and numerals. In 1910 Reis gave us names for the product: "Padding Letters, Skeleton Letters, Embroidery Forms, Foundation Letters and Embroidery Foundations."

Hand embroidered? Or ordered from a factory that machine embroidered to order?


Terms like Skeleton Letters and Embroidery Forms make one wonder if they are also talking about templates, machine-cut letters that you attached to your background and then satin-stitched over the skeleton.

Carol Leather found some British letter forms and tried it. Quite a nice look.


Virginia Berger directed us to a Stephanie Cake post with "Tico Forms for Padding & Stamping Hand Embroidered Initials." TICO must stand for The Initial Company, which may have been the Reis Brothers' competition. The Reises were likely to sue for patent infringement.


Luann Pfost summarized it for us and showed us some magazine pages:

"Starting in the late 1870s perforated patterns and hot iron transfers of such alphabets were easily purchased from any needlework store. At the time manufacturers used the same machine to make both. This allowed several options for needle-workers
#1 take your material to a printer or artist to be stamped.
#2 buy material that already has been stamped , embroider it then applique.
#3 buy pre made appliqué and sew it on.
#4 buy a hot iron transfer to stamp your fabric with.
#5 buy a stencil (perforated patterns are a type of stencil) and stamp your own.
#6 use a copy method to draw or trace onto your material."

Peggy Norris: "It occurs to me that some of the thrifty women would have taken a cue from the commercial product and cut out their own."

Why don't we use "Skeleton letters" to make slick embroidered labels? 
They may not sell them any more, but we could make our own. Crafts shops sell plastic stencils for fancy lettering. You could buy a set, trace your initials and/or date onto flannel or pellon, cut them out and satin stitch over them.

No templates here!

Now, some readers are not too happy with the "No Santa Claus" idea in crazy quilt embroidery. Quilts are just so emotionally linked---Sentimentalists cannot bear to think of commerce dictating style.  But it does. 


Alden O'Brien tells us she's always been skeptical about the presence of impressive hand embroidery on crazy quilts, knowing that few women at the time (1880-1925) were well-versed in the techniques.


Most of us would have little trouble distinguishing a possible machine-embroidered slip from a hand-guided, hand-embroidered inscription.

Debby Cooney Post
Well, not always.....

Applique over Skeleton Letters?

Ask to Join the 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYour Quilts

See a post: more
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/04/crazy-embroidery-4-kursheedts-embroidery.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawL0doZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCWkZzYVZDaTZQZVRBQzRQAR5DDedP6WtDx8vk97XfeTHpPn7Dr_LB2iy06urvoaqgTPKM-LMHxnXRf9jB5g_aem_PUFSDFzhcKfMNuR6O4S88Q

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/04/crazy-embroidery-4-kursheedts-embroidery.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawL0doZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCWkZzYVZDaTZQZVRBQzRQAR5DDedP6WtDx8vk97XfeTHpPn7Dr_LB2iy06urvoaqgTPKM-LMHxnXRf9jB5g_aem_PUFSDFzhcKfMNuR6O4S88Q