Delaware Quilts & Rising Suns

Hewson quilt from the Delaware Historical Society Collection

Nearly every state has done a quilt search. A few are still in progress, among them Delaware's. It's a small state (they have 3 counties; Kansas has 100), but important to quilt history because it was once a colony with a long quiltmaking tradition. It's great that they are posting pictures of what they've discovered in recording quilts.

Check out their web page by clicking here.
http://www.delawarequilts.org/
On  the left click on Quilt Images, then pick one of the documentation days, for example, DV-3 to see a slide show.

Two interesting things I found in looking at the various webpages connected with the project:

---A previously unpublished Hewson quilt in the collection of the Delaware Historical Society, shown above. Does this makes 31 on the list of quilts with fabric from 18th-century Phialdelphia printer John Hewson? (For more on Hewson fabrics see my blog entry:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2009/11/hewson-textiles-and-cuestas-lists.html  )
And see a press release featuring the Delaware quilt by clicking here:
http://history.delaware.gov/news/press/quilt_doc_history.shtml

---A quilt dated 1806, also in the collection of the Delaware Historical Society. Any quilt date-inscribed before 1830 is quite unusual. Something dated that early is a real document. Here's the thumbnail image of it. Click here to see a better picture:
http://history.delaware.gov/collections/documentation_quilts.shtml
Click on the folder showing the state collection then the image of the quilt. You'll see it's signed on the reverse: "Catharine Collins Hur Work August the 7 1806". It was made in Smyrna, Delaware.
The best thing is: It's a diamond star, what we might call a Star of Bethlehem and they might have called a Rising Sun. There isn't another dated example of this design until the 1830s, so this quilt is an important piece of pattern history.

These pictures I have pirated from the Delaware sites are fairly minimal so here are some more pictures of the Rising Sun, new and old, that I've found on the web or in my email.

Supposedly from 1832, New Jersey, online auction

Dated 1876?, online auction

Mid-20th-century, online auction

A 2009 reproduction seen at Taylors Outback blog:

http://taylorsoutback.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/our-2009-quilt-show-part-ii/

Reproduction by Roseanne Smith, Lawrence Kansas

Tile Quilt Revival

Lotus, Bobbi Finley

Carol Gilham Jones and Bobbi Finley's new book Tile Quilt Revival: Reinventing a Forgotten Form is in the quilt shops now. I wrote an introduction and got to include some photos I took of the tiles of Catalina Island.

Tile Quilts are a cross between applique and crazy quilts in which the backing fabric, the grout shows.

Starry Orange Peel, Bobbi Finley and Carol Gilham Jones

An interpretation of an antique quilt.

Here are two that aren't in the book.

Charles and His Favorite Things by Carol Gilham Jones

This fused portrait of Carol's husband also contains a portrait of Carol and their lovely dogs Grace and Sumo. The late Sophie is also on there.

All in the Family, Bobbi Finley and the Glory Bee, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2008

Bobbi is a cat person

The Road to California quilt event in Ontario, California will have a special exhibit of quilts from the book. Look for their show if you are going to Road to California at the Ontario Convention Center January 14-17. Read more about the exhibits here:

http://www.road2ca.com/exhibits.html

Read more about the book Tile Quilt Revival here

http://www.ctpubblog.com/2009/11/04/sneak-peak-tile-quilt-revival/

See a few antique tile quilts by clicking on these links:

Cowan Auctions sold a terrific example several years ago. It's in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg now.

http://www.cowanauctions.com/past_sales_view_item.asp?ItemId=35547

Woodard & Greenstein show a pair of tile quilt blocks.

http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=367395

Laura Fisher has a wool tile quilt on her website. It's appliqued shapes covered with embroidery.

http://www.laurafisherquilts.com/servlet/q.QDisplayItemDetail?in=10767

And see a tile applique inspired by the book at Brandy B's blog

http://brandybwine.blogspot.com/2009/12/sittin-up-in-my-room.html

Chords of Memory and Civil War Samplers

Elin Thomas sent a snapshot of her Chords of Memory Quilt, made from a pattern in my online club Underground Railroad Quilt Club for C&T Publishing.

Jean Stanclift's version of my Chords of Memory sampler

It's time to start thinking about your Civil War memory quilt to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the War in 1861. I'm going to post a block every week or so in the left column here from the online club and the Chords of Memory sampler.

You can subscribe and download patterns and history about the Underground Railroad by clicking here:

http://resources.ctpub.com/Clubs/BarbaraBrackmansUndergroundRailroadQuiltClub/tabid/57/Default.aspx

See Jun's Photo Gallery for her versions of the blocks.
http://bear-necessities.net/photo_album/thumbnails.php?album=7 

There are many samplers recalling the Civil War out there, most of them featuring traditional blocks. Among the most popular are Rosemary Young's books.

Women's Voices, a Civil War Quilt designed by Fabric Expressions

 

Judi Rothermel from Marcus fabrics has a new sampler The Civil War Tribute Quilt

I've been finding online pictures of the quilt Karla Menaugh and I did for our Sunflower Pattern Cooperative called War and Pieces

The one on the left is from Betty at Shady Wood Quilts

http://shadywood.blogspot.com/

On the right: Cynthia from Texas has posted hers

Nadine Kennedy was interviewed by the Quilt Alliance's Save Our Stories project

Click here to read the interview:

http://www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/qsos/interview.php?pbd=qsos-a0a6m9-a

The pattern is out of print, unfortunately.
I've done a few books on blocks to recall events in the Civil War. Both of these feature samplers and are still in print:

 

Carla Gay posted these blocks from Facts & Fabrications on the web

You can see more versions of the blocks by clicking here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/756536@N24/pool/

There are lots of samplers to choose from. Just don't make the mistake of starting a quilt that purports to tell the story of symbolism in the Underground Railroad. Historians agree that these supposed Quilt Code stories are misdirected history. If you make one you'll regret it as you get more familiar with quilts and Civil War history.

There is absolutely no way this Sailboat block, invented in the 1930s, could have anything to do with signals on the Underground Railroad. Don't fall for it. There were no quilt blocks used as symbols on the Underground Railroad.

Poison Green

The words Poison Green may bring a color to mind. Some think of the lime green we find in so many 19th-century quilts. Others see an institutional green or the Nile green in quilts from the 1930s and '40s.

Poison green is the topic of my subscription newsletter on dating quilts this week, so I've been doing research in Google Books, looking at 19th-century dye manuals to find out what shade the color is and how poison it was. There definitely was a poison green,  green dyes and pigments based on copper arsenate---arsenic. Chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) discovered arsenic's use as a coloring agent in 1778.

Variations became extremely popular for dyeing and printing cloth and wallpaper and, worst of all, for food coloring. Before pure food and drug laws the only testing was trial and error on the part of the consumer. Decades went by before people realized that coloring marzipan with copper arsenate was an extreme health hazard. Wallpaper and silks also could sicken, if not kill.

Scheele was a victim of his own chemical experiments, dying at 44 in 1786, long before Scheele's green was found to be poisonous.

A fashion plate from Godey's gives new meaning to the the term "fashion victim."

In the first half of the 19th-century green silk dresses were quite the mode. Fashionable homes required a Green Room---below is the Green Room at the White House about 1875.

 

By the 1860s people became aware of the toxic qualities in Scheele's green. Pale green fashion fell out-of-fashion, until a better, non-toxic mint green became available in the 1920s.

From what I can tell the arsenic greens produced a color much like the kitchen greens in our memory.

Someone's "before" bathroom remodeling photo. The tiles are plastic and the color is poison green.

Read more about Poison Green

http://www.popularscience.co.uk/features/feat17.htm

Read the history of the White House Green Room, a timeline of taste and the color green.

http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/floor1/green-room-history.htm

Buttons and Pearlies

I love this photo from the Library of Congress website showing piece workers in Williamsburg, Massachusetts about 1910. Lewis Hines's photo was meant to show us the injustices in child labor. This family makes a meager living stringing buttons, but the image just looks nostalgic today. That pile of buttons on the floor incites coveting and greed rather than an urge for reform.

That's a lot of buttons!

Makes me want to put them in a jar.

Every year my New Year's Resolution is to do SOMETHING with the jars of buttons I have been hoarding. Here are a few ideas:

1. Decorate Clothing

A Group of Pearlies in England

Pearlies are a Cockney folk tradition. Read more about them by clicking here:

http://www.cockneymuseum.u-net.com/pearlyintro.htm

2. Make a quilt

The one with the star is from an online auction. To read more about the other click here:

http://www.harveyantiques.com/collection.php?type=textiles&id=buttonquilt

And check this one out:

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/1089187410037561967cjSYQf

(That quilt is really not Civil-War-era, more like 1890)

I made this small piece in memory of my late dog Lexie D. Mutt

For other ideas (some good, some---well you can decide on what direction your new hobby should go)

http://www.buttoncandy.org/?p=47

http://www.work4idlehands.com/weblog/images/2008/2008-10-October/AllyPally3/pages/5-Jars_jpg.htm

http://layersofmeaning.org/wp/?m=200406

http://www.dollheads.com/crafts/?p=80

One Hundred Years Ago

Time Travel

Let's imagine we wake up on New Year's Day a hundred years ago and make a New Year's Resolution to finish a quilt. What would be on our list of Have-To-Stitch for 1910?

Mother and daughter doing piece-work sewing in a New York City apartment. The calendar on the wall says 1910. Photo from the Library of Congress collection.

I keep a file of dated quilts I find on auctions online and I have just three date-inscribed 1910, all embroidered. The embroidered date above is from the crazy quilt below, not a fancy crazy, but one very typical of the early 20th century. The fabrics look to be cotton, wools and cotton-wool blends with no silks typical of earlier crazy quilts. Initials on the pieces make one think it might have been a friendship quilt in which various women signed their squares.

Another quilt date-inscribed 1910 (below)  is related to the crazy quilt fad. It might better be termed a string-pieced wool star with embroidery. It's fancier, an echo of the more lavish embroidery one would have seen about 1890. In those twenty years several things happened to create the look of the 1910 wool quilt. Most important was a trade embargo on imported silk from China. World trade definitely affects the look of quilts, and wars in China prevented western mills from obtaining silk. Americans responded with simpler crazy quilts made of wools and cottons. Another factor was the lowering of standards for hand work as the generation who grew up with a sewing machine in the house gave little value to exacting hand sewing.

 Below is a small star quilt in wools and wool blends. It's embroidered with that seam covering stitching so fashionable at the time. The T.W. who signed it used an old-fashioned cross-stitch style for her initials, but the more popular satin stitch for the date.

Crazy quilts and wool quilts wouldn't have been the only possibility on your list of quilts to make. You might have decided to finish your redwork embroidered quilt. Here's a quirky medallion style dated 1907.

 Pieced album quilts in blues, reds, grays, pinks and blacks were popular. Below is one dated 1911.

Another popular style was the two-color pieced quilt. Blue and white made the most of the variety of indigos available as in the two quilts below, an Ocean Wave dated 1907 in the quilting and an Irish Chain dated 1915.

Red and white quilts took advantage of the colorfast Turkey reds that didn't run like the newer synthetic red dyes. Below a sawtooth medallion dated 1908.

But the standard quilt was probably the scrappy blue, pieced quilt like this one dated 1908, probably made from a pattern distributed by Clara Stone who published quilt designs in magazines and a catalog. She called the larger star block Fish or Whirligig.

Quilters in 1910 had many pieced designs available through periodicals and catalogs and they made many but didn't date them. One thing that was probably not on your list (unless you lived in southeastern Pennsylvania) was an applique quilt. They were so-o-o 19th century.