Lately Arrived: A Blurb Book

I've published a little book at Blurb.com called Lately Arrived From London: Cotton Prints & Patchwork Before 1820. It's a companion to my Moda fabric collection called Lately Arrived From London that will be in shops in September 2011.

Here are page spreads from the book

It's difficult to coordinate any kind of print material with a reproduction fabric line as they have such different lead times. But this Print-On-Demand book is available now and cannot be sold out. You can buy it now or buy it later when the fabric arrives in shops. Or when you finish the quilt made from the line.

It's 40 small pages (7" square), full of period illustrations and pictures of the fabric.

The fabric collection recreates prints from the turn of the 19th century when Americans imported their cottons. Traders brought the world’s luxury goods to wharves in Philadelphia, Boston and New York. Each piece is named for a trading ship that sailed into American harbors---the Charming Betsy, the Brigantine Sally, the Ship Surprise.

See more about the fabric by clicking here to see a PDF

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_lately_arrived_from_london.pdf

In the book I focused on Philadelphia's shops, particularly Chestnut Street, pictured here in the 1840s.

I wrote about the technology and taste that produced the prints. Here's a printed stripe that looks like a warp-printed woven pattern.

I show the original document print (above) and the reproductions

I include a few patterns for period quilts.

And some medallion quilts by my friends for inspiration.

I see it as a gift book, perfect to package with precut JellyRolls or Layer Cakes---or a little quilt made from the fabric.

You order it from Blurb.com. Click here to see a preview of the book:

http://www.blurb.com/books/2106301

You can order it as a paperback or a hardback book. Because it's print-on-demand they do not offer a  wholesale price, but they do offer a quantity discount.
The great thing about these Blurb books is there is so little turn-around time. I can do one in a week and have it in my hands the next week. PLUS---no book storage for me.

IQSC Quilt of the Month

Original design, Medallion. Frances Hawkins. Made in United Kingdom, dated 1818. Mosaic patchwork technique and appliqué. 96” x 85”. Collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum #2006.035.0001. Purchase made possible through James Foundation Acquisition Fund.

If you subscribe to the Quilt of the Month email from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum you were treated to a view of this quilt for May. The unquilted mosaic medallion is one of the twenty template-pieced bedcovers that will be on display at the Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska from May 28, 2011 through January 11, 2012. Elegant Geometry: American and British Mosaic Patchwork is curated by Bridget Long. Click here to see more about the show:

http://www.quiltstudy.org/exhibitions/online_exhibitions/mosaic.html

I recently got to study this quilt closely. I am always thrilled to see an early quilt and especially one with a date inscribed so I can see what kind of fabrics were in use at that date. Frances Hawkins used some very bright yellows. The yellow-ground chintz was popular here in the teens too.

Some of the prints, like the red on blue spade design, look to be block printed. The figure is very crude. Others look like the latest in roller prints. The European mills were making great strides in detail and color combinations during the first twenty years of the 19th century and Frances seems to have had all the latest fabrics.

Here's a side view of the tree that comes out of the basket in the center. Notice in the rosette below the bird are two hexagons with precisely positioned stars. I thought I'd seen that print before....

I found something very similar in my picture files. This mosaic quilt was sold online several years ago and had the same kind of strange pinstripe with a crudely printed star. The two quiltmakers each fussy cut the star (to use a new term for an old idea.) The other quilt is dated 1825 and signed with the initials L.F.

The star prints aren't exactly the same but they both look like the stars are stamped, stencilled or free-hand painted onto a roller-printed pinstripe. The similarities raise many questions.

Overall view of L.F.'s quilt

L.F

1825

A..d 9 Y...S

(Aged 9 years)

Contrast these two British quilts (I am guessing L.F.'s quilt was made in Great Britain although it is now in America) with the American made quilts in the previous post: Quite a difference between our domestic prints and the European prints in the first few decades of the 19th century.

Plan to go to Lincoln to see the Elegant Geometry show at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. You'll have a wonderful time looking at the quilts and the prints.

If you don't get the free Quilt of the Month email you should sign up here:
http://www.quiltstudy.org/collections/quilt_of_the_month/join.html

An Early Virginia Quilt

Rusty sent me photos of a quilt made by a long-ago family member. You may have seen this quilt displayed at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum a year or two ago.

 It is great to see photos with closeups, so thanks to him for sending and letting me post them.

Under the central vase is embroidered in counted cross-stitch:

“Sally Lee Camden her bed quilt”

Sally didn't put a date on it but we can guess it is a late-18th or early-19th century quilt. Genealogy work has discovered a Sally Lee Camden born in 1777 (or possibly 1785) in Amherst County, Virginia. Her parents were William and Sybell Dent Camden. She married Peter Dent in 1807 and changed her name to Sally Dent, so we can guess that the quilt was made before 1807. Sally died about 1850 in Bedford County, Virginia.

We have so few surviving quilts from 1800 that it is a wonderful piece of history despite it's worn condition. We can describe it as an embroidered and pieced medallion quilt, made from linen (behind the embroidery) and cotton prints. The prints look to be primarily blue and brown, probably printed with indigo and madder dyes.

Blue yarn embroidery on linen

The brown prints are quite worn. Many natural brown dyes were very hard on the yarn fibers and abrasion over the years deteriorates the fabric. These simple prints might be American prints rather than sophisticated European manufactured goods we'd see in chintz quilts being made at the same time.

The quilting is close lines with some cording

A similar appliqued linen quilt, also thought to be from Virginia.

This one, dated 1812, is from an online auction.

The close quilting, similar floral bouquet and vase and limited color schemes are typical of the few surviving quilts from the era.

Another medallion from an online auction

This one is dated 1804 and uses the same simple blue and brown cotton prints.

Rusty's quilt was found in an attic of an old log cabin, put there by someone who thought it was too worn to use anymore but too old to throw away. It's now over 200 years old, an early American survivor.

Civil War Memory Quilts

Barb Vedder who is half of the blog Fun with Barb and Mary sends photos of two Civil War commemoratives. Above is a block challenge for which she adapted a pattern from my book Civil War Women.

Jeff Davis's Daughter

by Nancy Hornback, Wichita, Kansas

1996

See our inspiration, Lucinda Honstain's "Reconciliation Quilt" in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum #2001.011.0001, which has a block with Jefferson Davis and his daughter Maggie in the second row. Click here:

http://cdn.firespring.com/images/5e612e00-d29b-45e2-bc69-9213fca49bb4.jpg

And here's Barb's medallion top. I thought people would want to know who printed the pictorials because they are such a great thing to add to the Civil War fabric stash, so I asked her if she recalled any names of collections.

Her answer is an impressive piece of memory work:

"Here are some of the lines that I used to create this quilt. I'm also a selvage quilter and had set aside a zip lock full off them from this project. I'll have to remember to do this in future as it worked well as a fabric reference.

Old Glory by Sara Morgan for Blue Hill
Bonnie Blue's America by Paula Barnes of Bonnie Blue Quilts
Commemorative Collection by Nancy Gere for Windham Fabrics
Civil War VII by Nancy Gere for Windham Fabrics
Fairmount Park - Industrial Revolution by Nancy Gere for Windham Fabrics
Coverlet Collection by Mary Koval for Windham Fabrics
Shirting prints by Jo Morton for Andover Fabrics
Heritage Classics by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Fabrics
Civil War Tribute Collection - 150 yr Anniversary by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Fabrics
America the Beautiful by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Brothers Textiles
Patriotic Legacies by Laurene Sinema for SSI

and more....being a scrap quilter, I use all and any motifs and colors that I feel work with the piece I'm making. I feel that any patriotic or Americana fabrics would work well for this kind of medallion quilt."

See Barb's post here:
http://funwithbarbandmary.blogspot.com/2011/04/girls-just-wanna-have-fun.html

And here's a link to a print-on-demand version of Civil War Women with the Maggie Davis pattern in it.
http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=1857

The New Moon

 

Those who visited the red and white quilt show last month in New York may have noticed this graphic quilt featuring a star and crescent moon.

From Donna Stickovich's collection

I've seen a few variations on the pattern. In my Encyclopedia of Applique it's numbered 60.77, Star & Crescent from the Wilkinson Sisters who had a cottage industry making quilts in Indiana in the early 20th century.

You don't see the block too often. Here's a tattered black and white version from an online auction. People occasionally ask about me the symbolism, but I have no way of knowing what the quiltmakers or the Wilkinson sisters were thinking.

The image is an old one. We see it now most often as an Arabic image and find it on many flags including some in the western world.

Above Algeria's, South Carolina's and Tunisia's flags with a crescent moon.

It's doubtful that the quilters all had a common published source for their patterns since there is so much variation in the shapes.
It may have been meant to represent a Masonic symbol. Below is a block from a mid-19th century quilt full of Masonic imagery.

And above a Shriner fez

See two examples of the moon and star block from the Quilt Index. One looks to be from the 1930s, 40s....
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-626
And one made in 1969
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-359
And here's a wonderful mid-20th-century quilt full of Masonic images.
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-E 

Tonight the new moon appears. Take a peek outside after dark.

Landscape with Couple Walking

& Crescent Moon

Vincent VanGogh 1890

Happy May Day

Detail Dolly Varden quilt

Designed by Esther O'Neill

I hope someone put a bouquet of flowers on your doorstep this morning. I recently received an email from quilt historian Xenia Cord that opened up a May bouquet. I'd shown a faded picture of a quilt dated 1923 in my subscription newsletter on date-inscribed quilt.  I thought it was embroidered but she filled me in on the source.

"It's a version of Esther O'Neill's [appliqued] "Dolly Varden" quilt. O'Neill had a fancywork shop in Indianapolis, and graduated to kits in the late teens. She published the "Dolly Varden" in several versions..."

Quilt dated 1923 with scalloped border

A version with buds in the border

... with and without the colored border with inside scallops, omitting that detail in 1924 because, in her words: ...This is on account of the scarcity of goods and advance in prices." (Typed note on the back of a design sheet, in envelope postmarked July 28, 1924).

See three versions of her leaflet (and note that the bow goes at the top!):

Aunt Martha's version of the Dolly Varden quilt from Royal Neighbor magazine, April 1931.

I was familiar with the term Dolly Varden, at least as far as fish are concerned.
 

Dolly Varden Trout

with spots

But I didn't know that the source of the term Dolly Varden for something gaudy or colorful is from a character in Charles Dickens's book Barnaby Rudge.

Dolly was a character who was a bit overdressed. Her name seems to have been applied to everything in the 1870s, particularly a hat perched on the head and a very complex bustle. Here's a description of her from Barnaby Rudge

"As to Dolly, there she was again, the very pink and pattern of good looks, in a smart little cherry-coloured mantle, with a hood of the same drawn over her head, and upon the top of that hood, a little straw hat trimmed with cherry-coloured ribbons, and worn the merest trifle on one side—just enough in short to make it the wickedest and most provoking headdress that ever malicious milliner devised."

Read the book Barnaby Rudge at Google Books by clicking here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JfoKAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=barnaby+rudge&hl=en&ei=bhurTaPsLcHYgQeA7szzBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

Dolly Varden cigar box

Another version of Esther O'Neill's design without the scallop border

Read about the Dolly Varden dress by clicking here:

http://zipzipinkspot.blogspot.com/2008/08/brief-history-of-dolly-varden-dress.html

See Esther O'Neill Mullinex's quilt at the Indiana State Museum by clicking here:

http://museumcollections.in.gov/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=object_type&s=quilt%2C+applique&record=11