Uncommon Patience or Useless Work?

Throughout the history of American patchwork, some quilters have hoped to astound the audience---or at the least the local newspaper editor looking

for a little filler. 

27,656 pieces in 1828, Doyleston, PA

Eva Margaret Delaplain Rogers, Missouri,

 30,672 pieces she says

Here's an excuse to show some patchwork feats

with 19th-century editorial comments.

I'm not counting these pieces. The quilts have nothing to do with

the newspaper clippings, except for an emphasis on numbers.

7,239 pieces in Charleston, SC, 1834

"An uncommon stock of patience and perseverance"

Bessie Ely, Collection of the Smithsonian Institutiuon

From the New York Project & the Quilt Index

Broken Dishes

Counting stitches in New York

Ocean Wave, Annie Hart Beall, Collection of the Ohio Historical Society.  

14,572 pieces says the caption in the Ohio book, Quilts in Community.

58,104 in 1886 in Granada, MS

An octagonal block

Curiosity Quilt with 20,218 pieces in 1912 in Ware Shoals, SC

From Robert Shaw's book

American Quilts: The Democratic Art

45,966---Chatanooga, TN, 1888

"Mary Sewell, a sweet 16-year-old young lady who resides near Chattanooga...has pieced a quilt that has 45,966 scraps in it. It is fearful to think a mind may also go to pieces fastened so long to such useless work. The quilt when completed will be no better for use than the $2 quilt made of plain material."

Elnetta Josephine Gifford, Michigan Project & the Quilt Index.

From Florida Memory

Queen Udell. Her husband says she has the "Patience of Job."

"5810" it says in the center

By Sallie Jane Woodward,Iredell County, North Carolina.

 North Carolina project & the Quilt Index. 

How Old is This Quilt? Win a Free Fat Quarter

A long time ago Margaret signed and dated this quilt giving us an opportunity to use it as a teaching tool for dating quilts. 

I have a new feature on the American Quilt Study Group's Facebook page. Once a month in 2018 I will post an antique quilt with the date on it (and not tell you the date). Readers can guess a date and tell us why they picked that particular year.

After a week I'll post the actual date and those who came closest will get a a fat quarter of reproduction fabric in the mail.

Oh Boy!

We can all learn something by the crowd-sourced dating information. Here are some of the educated guesses about Margaret's quilt:

Sharon P: I will go with 1850s, based on fabric and double rod quilting [or is it triple rod?]. [Two lines then a skip and two more lines = double rod]

Taryn: The 1850s because I own a dated (1854 or 1857, can't tell which) quilt that has very similar fabrics, quilting and design style

Teri: I also guess c. 1850. the binding looks like that early unreliable blue-over-yellow green of that era. Also as best I can tell, the red part of the peonies is made of 3 chevrons rather than 6 diamonds, which is how some southern Indiana quiltmakers pieced Polk's Fancy quilts of the Mexican War era.

(I hadn't noticed that chevron applique Teri. Just assumed those were diamonds)

Kathy M.C: The funkiness of the appliqué, specifically the border, tells me just shy of 1850. Thus my decision on 1848.

Barbara G: 1860-1870 turkey red print set Foulard, yellow in the small figures, Indiennes? Block set on point? Vines on the border

Kay: 1848, though it could be later if someone saved fabrics. Double row quilting, yellow green with a simple print, and "Carolina lily" variation say early red and green to me. No chintz or interesting prints to date it much earlier. Repeated block pattern tends to be early or much later. Later greens tend to have more blue, but hard to tell if my computer screen makes it look different than it is.

Margaret C. Roberts her quilt

done March the 7th

1848

Here's who guessed 1848: Kathy, Kay & Roberta. And as Teri said: "A lot of us were pretty darn close." We AQSG members are really good at this. And if you want to get good make a guess and read their comments each month in 2018.

We'll do it again in February. Check the AQSG Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/AmericanQuiltStudyGroup/posts/

Daniel Dobler's Album Quilt

At the Maryland Institute Fair in 1852 Daniel Dobler showed a quilt he'd been given by students when he left teaching in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania to return to Baltimore.

Remarkably, his quilt survives.

Daniel's great-granddaughter Mary Sauerteig (1931-2016) showed the quilt she'd inherited. Her grandfather's name was on one of the blocks.

"From John William B??? Dobler

To his affectionate Father

Elizabethtown Lan Co Pa

Nov 12th 1849"

UPDATE: Virginia tells me: John William Baehr Dobler (1827–1892)

"It was given to Mary Sauerteig's great-grandfather, Daniel Dobler, by students, relatives and friends upon his retirement from teaching in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Mary's grandfather, along with another of Daniel Dobler's sons, each provided one of the squares."

Variations of the fleur-de-lis pattern were popular 

for album quilts at the time. I have pictures of five with dates of 1849

 on them, this one from the Moda collection.

In a history of Lancaster County Dr. Daniel Dobler (1804-1859) is described as a physician with no formal medical training. "After working in a drugstore he became a practicing physician at 28." In 1844 "he decided to teach at the schoolhouse adjacent to the Lutheran Church." Son John William also maintained a school in Elizabethtown. The quilt may have been made by members of a Lutheran church, perhaps Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church where two infant Doblers who died in the 1830s are buried.

Quilt dated 1849

Another son Gustavus (1839-1903) became a Maryland state senator. His biographies reveal a bit more about his father. Daniel was born in 1804 in Baltimore to German immigrants.

Christina Dobler's grave. Husband

and wife are buried in the Baltimore Cemetery

 He married Christina Barbara Iehle (1802-1867) from Wurtemburg, Germany. He is described as a "chemist, physician and teacher [and] a manufacturer of paper boxes" in Baltimore. 

 Dobler quilt on display

The Doblers had at least seven children and it seems that some also entered handiwork at the Baltimore fairs. In 1852 Miss P.T. Dobler of Elizabethtown entered a vase of paper flowers (presumably daughter Paulina Theodora) and Miss Catherine Dobler showed two cases, crochet work.

Block from a quilt dated 1849 for Sarah Mullen,

Lancaster County, Collection: Lancaster History.

Links among  people who signed mid-19th century album quilts are mostly unknown, but church connections are obvious in many. School connections are not found so often. Daniel Dobler's is one of perhaps twenty school-related signature quilts I have in my picture files. This year's Block of the Month at my Civil War Quilts blog is focused on school connections with a dozen pieced album blocks planned. See the first post in Antebellum Album here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/01/antebellum-album-1-wandering-lover.html

A pattern of sorts for this combination of hearts and fleur-de-lis.

Print it at 200%.

And read more about the fleur-de-lis albums here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/06/philadelphia-beauty-or-four-frogs.html

Sunflowers & Chintz

From Stella Rubin's inventory.

About 1820-1840

When I dream about getting really good at piecing I dream I will make a quilt like this.

Sunflowers of chintz.

Setting shapes in the quilt above were cut from this popular chintz.

Here's a great sunflower from the Rhode Island Project

using a variation of Swainson's Palm Tree print.

Sunflowers and chintzes: Apparently patchwork fashion in the 1820-1840s. The busy quilts give you a glimpse of decorating taste at the time.

Collection of the Marquette Regional History Center.

Michigan Project & the Quilt Index.

Documenters dated it to last quarter of the 19th century

but I'm confused. It certainly fits in with the earlier style and

fabrics.

The link:

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

Like those above it's based on a set of a circle and a squeezed

square rather than a block set....

Circular sunflowers connected with a shape that fits between.

Here in white.

On the diagonal but like Mary Orgain's below.

Quilt signed and dated 1818 Sterling and Mary Orgain

Texas quilt project & the Quilt Index.

Made by Mary Elizabeth Jones Orgain (1801-1878)

Collection of the Briscoe Center

Tastes change and fashion for patterned chintz gave way to more interest in patchwork pattern.

Mary Esther Hoyt Smith's quilt from the Connecticut Project

might be considered transitional taste.

Busy sunflowers and busy chintz confined to square blocks.

See the Connecticut book for photos of her quilt.

Here's the chintz Mary Esther used.

From Jeffrey Evans Auction

Sunflowers may be confined in this masterpiece but some are still busy, busy, busy.

It's a fight between the patchwork and the print.

You can see how a look this distinctive could become old fashioned.

As calico became the thing.

Mid-19th-century taste from Stella Rubin's shop

By Catherine Bennett Tandy, from Mary Barton's collection

Iowa Project and the Quilt Index

From a Pook & Pook Auction

Nice enough, but awfully tame if you love the tension

 between patchwork pattern and printed pattern.

Field of Sunflowers by Gabrielle Paquin

 You might want to make a quilt inspired by the early examples as Gabrielle Paquin has done.

It looks like she used a block

If you want a period look with an all over design (shows off the chintz better)....

Find a Sunflower in a block pattern you like.

This one is BlockBase #3480.

Print templates for the desired size. Instead of cutting the corner shapes as

they appear, fold your chintz fabric in quarters adding seams along the curves and outside edge but

not the lines on the fold.

William Morris-ey

There is also a pattern for a reproduction made by

Carol Gilham Jones in my out-of-print book

America's Printed Fabrics. Carol's is pieced over paper arcs.