Circular Reasoning

Detail of a quilt made by Zella Ingram in Dayton, Ohio

found by the West Virginia Project. Photo from the Quilt Index.

Zella's quilt looks to be about 1910. The pattern is

fascinating (to those of us fascinated by pattern). I can't find it

in BlockBase although it has relatives, including the Improved Nine Patch

See this weeks Cloud of Quilt Patterns post on that design at this link:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/01/improved-nine-patch.html

You first see a circle and a sort of lozenge shape, a squeezed square, but 

she pieced it as a square block.

The block alternates with a plain white block. I drew it in EQ.

It looks do-able, especially if it were pieced over paper.

So how did I draw that pattern for a design that has no BlockBase number?

I'm not that good at drawing curves and complex structures in EQ. If it's more than a 9-patch I usually import a pattern from BlockBase and use that structure. Then erase and/or add lines.

So I found the nearest thing with the same basic proportions.

Far More Complex 

It's a curved shape in a block.

Chimney Swallow from Clara Stone about 1900.

2691a or 2691b

A pattern with a lot of names in a design that hardly anybody ever made.

Well, Carrie Hall made one block.

From her block collection at the Spencer Museum of Art.

I imported BlockBase 2691a into Electric Quilt and erased a lot of lines.

Voila!

Print this on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper for a pattern

for an 8" block.

I really couldn't find any vintage examples of the more complex 2691---Chimney Swallows. When I did a search in the Quilt Index no vintage quilts came up. But this impressive 21st-century quilt was recorded in the Arizona project.

Swallows in the Garden by Karen Bogardi

Another pattern structure is to do it as an all-over design with no square block. It looks like

that's the way Karen did her Chimney Swallows.

And here's an early 20th century variation done that way.

 

Seam lines?

Very cool how the corners make a design going north/south and the

centers make the same design on a diagonal.

See Zella's quilt here:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-CC4

Karen's here
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=67-EC-9A2

And look at the new EQ8 here:
http://electricquilt.com/online-shop/category/electric-quilt-8-eq8/

American Textile History Museum Update

Quilt once in the collection of the American Textile History Museum.

The American Textile History Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, closed last year.

2017 was spent transferring collections to other museums and institutions.

The museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, did not have many quilts. What they had in abundance were records of the textile printing industry. I spent a few days there many years ago looking at their swatch cards and sample books.

"The first delaine that ever came in to Lowell 1830"

Eliza Ann Cunningham's Sewing Diary with

a page of prints from 1861

Bolt label from Hamilton Print Works

Their library collection called the Osborne Library has been transferred to the Cornell University Libraries in New York. While in Lowell at the ATHM the Osborne library included printed, pictorial and manuscript material: books, pamphlets, government documents, trade catalogs, advertising material, prints, photos and business records.

"portions of the library, archive, and museum collections – including its extensive holdings of maps, dye books and recipes, patents, and trade literature, as well as curatorial collections, including machinery and costumes -- will be transferred to other institutions."
"The majority of the collection of historic textile machinery has been sent to the Randolph Heritage Conservancy (RHC) in North Carolina."

Sample card from Allen Print Works with a lace print/border print.

Materials related to textile production, science and agriculture are now part of the Albert R. Mann Library, which specializes in agriculture, the life sciences, and human ecology. Much of the library is at the Kheel Center at Cornell. "Though the items will become part of the collections of Mann, Kheel and [Rare Manuscripts] most will be housed at the Library Annex."

Trade catalogs, trade sheets, and trade cards have been transferred to The Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.

"The remaining collections have been dispersed to museums and charitable organizations across the country."

UPDATE: Virginia B. notes this list of transfers. Looks like the quilts went to the Winterthur and the Henry Ford Museums.
http://www.athm.org/about-athm/path-to-closure/athm-collections-transfer-update/future-homes-of-athm-collections/

Here's a press release:
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/03/library-acquires-vast-collection-textile-industry-materials

Early Circular Pieced Designs

Online auction

Found in Richmond, Virginia

When you come across a quilt like this and want to estimate a date there are a few excellent clues,

the most obvious being the fabrics. The white-ground chintz tells you the quilt is probably before 1850 (maybe before 1830).

The fringed border is another clue to "before the Civil War in 1860." Both design characteristics fell out of favor about 1850 so are useful in establishing a late date.

The pieced pattern is also a clue, but tells you more about the earliest possible date, rather than the latest. Could the quilt above be 1820s?  How early were Americans piecing repeat-block, wheel-shaped patchwork?

Early, as evidenced by this quilt date-inscribed 1818 signed Mary Jones Orgaine.

See more about this quilt in the collection of the Briscoe Center here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/05/mary-elizabeth-jones-orgains-1818.html

Another online example, this one from Susan W. Greene's collection.

She estimated the date as about 1820 with

both fabric and pieced design contributing to that conclusion.

Quilt date-inscribed 1833 S.S. Larkin.

Old Sturbridge Village

Mary Esther Smith,

Connecticut project & the Quilt Index

Collection of the National Museum of American History,

Smithsonian, Gift of Patricia Smith Melton.

The pattern was apparently quite popular (think

of all the 1810-1850 examples that have disappeared!)

It is interesting that all the blocks above have 16 spokes.

#3480 in Block Base. 

(The proportion of the diamond shape is a little long here but I'd still call it #3480)

The pattern has been published many times under different names. We might call it a Sunflower but that's probably not the early-19th-century name.

The number of spokes is not always 16. Here's one

dated 1832 with 14 spokes.

Again, 14 divisions (not the geometry I'd be choosing) from

the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

http://collections.lacma.org/node/252334

From Stella Rubin's gallery of sold quilts: 18 diamonds

and not a square block.

I've been posting photos of early date-inscribed quilts to Pinterest so

I can get an overview of patterns decade by decade. I noticed the

development of circular pieced repeat designs in the teens.

https://www.pinterest.com/materialculture/1811-1820-quilts-date-inscribed/

Have none in the 1820s but seven circular designs of various construction in the 1830s.

Notice the red arrows.

https://www.pinterest.com/materialculture/1831-1840-quilts-date-inscribed/

Making me think that rather complicated circular patterns

were among the earliest in establishing an American patchwork style.

Block from about 1950

The pattern tells you nothing about the latest possible date. Quilters continue to use it. If you are inclined to try a geometric challenge these early examples may give you some design ideas.

And one last early beauty: 20 points and lots of chintz

from the collection of the Marquette Regional History Center in Michigan.

Photo from the Quilt Index

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-28C4

Clara Stone---Pattern Designer

 

Martha Spark called my attention to this quilt shown at a MOKA meeting.

(Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas Study Group)

Looks to be about 1880-1910 by the fading solid colors. Wonder

what the tan once was. Red would have been a stunner. The question: Any ideas on the pattern?

I finally found the block

1075.2 in BlockBase

Fox & Geese from Clara Stone

It seems to me that Clara included both the block and the sashing in her illlustration.

The block is a square in a square. The sashing a form of flying geese.

Maybe she intended the quilt to look like this.

UPDATE: Mandy drew it up in BlockBase & EQ. Above her Fox & Geese design.

The illustration conventions of Clara Stone's day made it hard

to show anything but a block.

Which is what the quiltmaker saw.

She then added her own square in a square sashing.

See some pattern relatives at this post:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-cradle-quilt-in-ladies-home-journal.html#comment-form

Here's Mandy's version in EQ

I've never known much about Clara A. Stone of Holliston, Massachusetts. I didn't have a copy of her her catalog and never collected many of her newspaper pattern clippings. Wilene Smith is the expert and she has figured out that "C.A.S." of  Holliston often contributed pattern designs to periodicals published by Vickery and Hill of Augusta, Maine. 

Vickery & Hill was an important publisher with magazines including Hearth & Home, Good Stories and American Woman. Stone mailed patterns to Vickery between 1897 and 1905.

Then in May, 1906 another publisher, C.W. Calkins of Boston, published Quilt Patterns by Clara A. Stone in their series Practical Needlework. The booklet contained illustrations of Stone's patterns without text.

Some of the authors for Calkins and Vickery used pen names, but one gets the feeling there really was a Clara A. Stone of Holliston because she had long contributed patterns with her initials. However, no one's found any other evidence of Clara A. Stone.

Stone was an influential source for quilt patterns in the early 20th century. Her designs were often the first published source for patterns later picked up by other designers. Stone's Fish or Whirligig, for example, has been republished many times over the past 110 years.

About 20 years after Stone's catalog Ruby McKim

published her Fish Block.

And in 1937 the Chicago Tribune columnist Loretta Leitner writing as Nancy Cabot described an "old and frequently made pieced block suddenly has been given a modern title. Years ago it was known simply as 'Fish Block,' but some enterprising quilt maker decided that it should be given a more specific appellation, hence 'Trout and Bass' block."

Nancy made things up out of whole cloth. The block was neither very old nor very frequently made. I  bet both she and McKim had copies of the Clara Stone booklet. 

Louisiana Project & the Quilt Index.

Fell off a truck and was rescued.

Louisiana Project by Alma McCall

Top from the Iowa Project

I looked in the Quilt Index for examples of the Fish Block and found about a half a dozen, all made after 1930, probably from McKim's or Cabot's designs. I'd imagine that Clara Stone designed many of the blocks like the fish block herself. 

Appliqued and pieced star quilt, mid-19th century

from a Quilt Engagement Calendar

You can certainly see its origins in 19th century quilts but there is nothing quite like it until after she published the pattern.

You can have a copy of Clara Stone's innovative booklet as a free PDF here:

http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/pub/PDF/StoneQuiltPatterns.nw.pdf