Women's Relief Corps Quilt

A few weeks ago a woman I didn't know handed me a bundle of shattered silks in the form of a crazy quilt.

It was a wreck. Most of the silks were in terrible shape due to the metal salts and dyes that cause them to decompose. She said she wanted me to tell her it was OK to throw it out. I am the wrong person to ask this question of. "Never throw anything out," is my motto. On Hoarders they'd call me an enabler.

Right away I noticed there are WRC ribbons on it.

The WRC (The Women's Relief Corps) is the ladies' auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veteran's association (GAR). The ribbons are from Civil War Reunions in the 1920s.

Here's one from the GAR with their symbol on it.

Well I was overenthusiastic in my praise of the ragged quilt.

Even though it was poorly composed, never finished and shedding silk like an April hailstorm in Kansas.

I told her it was a fabulous historical document.

Now it's mine. She was happy to leave it in my home for orphan quilts.

My guess is it's from Michigan

Made in the 1920s

With many silk souvenir ribbons and collectibles attached.

It was the ideal transaction. No money exchanged. I was happy to get it. She was happier to get rid of it. Now I get to spend some time tracking down those organizations.

See a quilt made by WRC members in Michigan in the Quilt Index here:

http://museum.msu.edu/glqc/collections_7547.1.html

For more about the Civil War Reunions see my blog posts

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/01/civil-war-reunion.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/03/civil-war-reunion-star.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/01/civil-war-reunion-memorial-quilts.html

A Confederate Quilt

I came across this quilt recently in somebody's vacation snapshots, taken in a small Texas museum: a quilt behind a fossil case (probably fading away in the light.) What a strange pattern. But you know it could be a Civil War quilt. It's hard to tell the age of a quilt from a photo and the fabrics all seem to be solids. Very little help. But there is nothing to say that it's not 1860-1900.

That star appliqued border is intriguing. I have probably seen ten or more Civil War quilts with the same border, taken from the 1861 Union quilt pattern published in Peterson's Magazine.

And the block---is that four shields?

Pieced and appliqued?

Well I didn't think much more about it for a day or two

And then I came across this image on a Civil War envelope. I'd seen dozens of Union envelopes from the War, but never a Confederate envelope. I had never noticed "The Emblem of the South," a shield with three stripes just like the first flags.

So I looked at my files of Confederate quilts (a very small file). Here's the same shield in Varina Davis's post-war memorial quilt.

Another envelope---this a Virginia symbol

It seems to be an image that is almost forgotten. The differences between the Confederate shield and the Union shield are subtle (like the differences between the first Confederate and the Union flags.)

Union shields (these two are from Union quilts) have more stripes.

That Texas quilt needs better documentation and conservation.

See more about Varina Davis's quilt here:

http://www.mocquilts.org/

And more about the star border here at my blog post here

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/30-petersons-stars-stripes.html

And see many more actual Civil War quilts on my Pinterest Board

http://pinterest.com/materialculture/quilt-civil-war/