Green Calico Reproductions

Mid 19th-century applique block

The difficulties in dyeing and printing cottons green created a rather limited print style that became a classic with 19th-century American quilters.

Possibly 1870-1890

Small-scale green prints were not generally used for clothing or for interior decorating. Quilt historians believe they were printed and marketed to quilters---who loved them for applique and piecing.

When looking for reproductions consider
1) Color
2) Color combinations in the print
3) Print scale
4) Print content

Block dated 1858

1) Color. You have to decide what shade of green you are looking for. Are you trying to match the green as it came off the bolt? A clear color, rather a grass green?

1870s-two similar prints shifting in different fashion.

Or are you copying a faded quilt? Do you want a yellow-green or a teal?

Probably 1880-1910

Or perhaps a brownish green to copy the end-of-the-century greens that faded to a dun color of gray or tan.

2) Color Combinations. You are limited here if you are trying to get the classic period look. You want three colors: green, yellow and black. You might also have a blue figure in there for a mid-century green.

Original print

Reproduction:

A Nancy Gere design she calls Poison Green in her Colonies collection

This stripe from a mid-19th-century block has black figures with no yellow.

Blue figures are sometimes seen with the yellow and black figures,

 as in this mid-19th-century block.

Reproduction:

Five good greens from Jo Morton's Crimson & Clover

3) Print Scale. Look for small-scale calicoes, rather tiny figures without a lot of detail.

A block dated 1869

Reproduction:

A suggestion of a fleur-de-lis from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum collection

4) Print Content: Look for geometrics (for example: stars and dots), florettes (general flower and leaf shapes) and stripes.

A geometric from about 1910.

These prints from about 1900 show very little detail in the figures.

The flowers are mere suggestions of a floral, what fabric designers call ditsies.

Reproduction

A perfect ditsy from Judi Rothermel's Lancaster County collection

Now you know what to look for. I can't tell you where to buy them as some of them are way out of print (and they ARE my competitors) but I will tell you to buy at least a yard when you see good green repros. You can't have too many green calicoes if you make reproduction quilts.

Irish Chains

A 20th-century version

of the Double Irish Chain

My great-grandmother was born in Ireland 150 years ago today. I remember her well as she was a formidable presence in my grandmother's house until I was six years old. To recall this sesquicentennial of an Irish-American immigrant I've put a version of the Irish Chain as the Civil War Block of the Week this week on my other blog. Click here to read more:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/27-irish-chain.html

 Since I couldn't fit everything I wanted to say about the Irish Chain there I thought I'd go on about it here.

An indigo and white Irish Chain pieced of nine-patch blocks---

guess as to date:

1840-1880

First we have to define an Irish Chain: An overall design of squares creating a secondary linked pattern across the quilt's surface.

What's the difference between a nine patch and an Irish Chain?

Nine-Patch

Guess as to date: 1840-1860

A nine-patch can be an Irish Chain, but the one directly above is not shaded to make a chain. The blocks really don't work together to create an all-over linked pattern. Had she shaded all the center and corner squares in her blocks in similar fashion it would have looked like a chain.

We tend to call the linked nine-patch examples Single Irish Chains.

It's really the consistent shading that makes an Irish Chain.

Here's another variation from Pennsylvania (1880-1920). The quilt not only has complex shading that links the blocks, it's also a fairly complex design of two alternating blocks.

One block is 25 squares

And the other has a square in each corner.

These corner squares can be pieced in or appliqued.

We tend to call these Double Irish Chains.

Here's a Triple Irish Chain (late-19th-century?)

Again alternating blocks.

One with 49 squares

The other with three squares appliqued or pieced into the corners.

In looking at quilts with dates actually on them I was surprised to find how consistently popular Irish Chain designs have been.

The women who made and dated the quilts above may not have called them Irish Chains but it is interesting how closely these 18th-century quilts resemble our versions of Irish chains. The one on the right even alternates a block of 49 squares---a Triple Irish Chain on point.

The pattern is one of the earliest organized patchwork designs in American quilts.

So if you wanted to make a period design from the late-18th-century through the present time a Single Irish Chain would be suitable. The quilt dated 1851 is a Triple Irish Chain, which would also be appropriate. The only difference between time periods would be color and fabric choices with red and green popular after 1840 or so, and more subdued browns and blues used before that.

Red and white variations were popular at the end of the 19th century

Double pinks and indigo blue prints

And then new colors in solids from new dyes in the twentieth century.

See more Irish Chains by clicking here on two from the Quilt Index.
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-F5
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-5C

And one for sale at the Quilt Complex
http://shop.thequiltcomplex.com/2008/11/back-to-tqc-quilt-complex-quilts-for_21.html

Green Calicoes: Antique prints

A quilt from about 1900.

 The color arrangement (bright color next to bright color) and the fondness for traditonal small scale calicoes at this late date indicate a possible southeastern Pennsylvania origin where these nostalgic prints remained popular into the 20th century.

Green calicoes were a mainstay of the 19th-century quilters' palette. Because they were so common they are among the most difficult quilt fabrics to date. We see similar fabrics in quilts from about 1810 to 1970.

Ann Robinson used a variety of green calicoes

 in her quilt dated 1813-1814 in the collection

 of the Shelburne Museum.

A green calico frames a hexagon rosette

in a friendship quilt dated

1842 and 1842. This may be the original shade of green,

 an example of an overdyed green off the bolt (so to speak).

The majority of the prints used in American quilts are related to two methods used to produce green in cottons. The older (seen till about 1900)  is an overdyed green produced with two different dyebaths of blue and yellow natural dyes. Later greens (after 1870 or so) were produced by synthetic dyes in a single-step dyeing process.

Overdyed green print in a quilt dated 1841

This print has faded to a teal or blue-green, probably because the yellow dye was more fugitive than the blue.  Both blue and yellow could fade, shifting the green to lime green or teal (blue-green). The red, brown and green combination in the print here is more typical of quilts before 1860 than those after.

Overdyed greens may have looked similar to begin with but different dye processes fade in different fashion so we can usually get many clues to the dyes by telltale color loss.

A sampler dated 1849 shows the two shifts likely in overdyed greens.

The blues tend to be more fugitive than the yellows

so we most often see overdyed green shifting to yellow-green.

Something dramatic happened to this top dated 1867-68.  In the overdyed solid on the left, the blue is more colorfast. Something (probably something with an acid pH) has pulled the yellow out of the green. The calico leaf seems to remain just as it was printed.

Two different green dye types in one quilt

Setting squares that look to have been overdyed have blotched to blue as the yellow disappears in areas. The calico in the block dated 1870 was probably dyed with the newer single-step green synthetic dyes and has faded to what dyers call a dun color. Dun is a gray-brown---a nothing color.

The most common green calicoes are printed with green backgrounds and small figures of yellow and blue-black as in the leaves in this quilt dated 1858. The color combination of yellow in some areas, blue in others and green where the two overlapped made practical sense in the two-step green process.

Because dyers had no good black dye for cottons till the 1890s they often used a dark blue (and perhaps a dark brown dye) that appear black. The detail is from a quilt is dated 1856.

Green calicoes with black and yellow figures continued into the mid-20th century even as the dye processes changed. The print above in a quilt dated 1873 is of a common print style sometimes called "oil-boiled calicoes" by the manufacturers, implying that they were done in an old-fashioned method dyeing method (although they weren't really boiled in oil).

A similar print in a quilt dated 1897. The green produced by synthetic dyes has almost completely disappeared leaving the black figure. It's no wonder that most 20th-century quilters stopped using greens until they became more colorfast in the 1930s.

The print in the star above probably once looked a little more like this.

Here the green is a figure and the black the background with yellow accents.

A classic reproduction print.

We forget that mills marketed reproduction prints in the past. Here's another "oil-boiled calico," an old-fashioned print manufactured from about 1870 to the recent past.

Readers ask where to get good reproductions of the green calicoes, a necessity for Civil-War-era and applique reproductions. In this post: the basics of the original green calicoes. Soon---what to look for in a reproduction.
See more of my blog posts about greens in antique fabrics by clicking here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/10/faded-greens.html
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/01/poison-green.html
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2009/08/piece-and-plenty.html

The Next Morris Collection-Sneak Peek

Anemone

from Morris & Company

We're always working ahead in the fabric business. Here's what's happening in July that customers will see in November. The sales reps have the sample cards of the next William Morris collection I am doing with Moda. They'll be showing it to the shop owners over the next few weeks.


Morris & Company will have 40 different pieces in the collection. Eight prints in a variety of colorways. We've scheduled it for delivery in November (with precuts a little earlier.)

Eyebright will blend nicely with the larger prints

This collection highlights William Morris’s skills at translating nature into pattern.  Eyebright, above, is a tiny alpine bloom.

Anemone

One of the larger prints is the showy Anemone, a floral that reveals Morris’s close observation of his garden.  

Brother Rabbit

Brother Rabbit features visitors with whom he shared the garden---birds and rabbits.

Wandle

The large print Wandle was named by Morris “to honor our helpful stream,” the river that flowed near the dyeworks, providing water for the coloring processes as well as a lovely landscape. The diagonal with it's branches (tributaries) symbolizes the river.  

Pink & Rose

Morris called this carnation print Pink and Rose. Pink is an old-fashioned name for carnation.
The accent color in this collection is a burnt orange. The colors echo the shades of the natural dyes so important to Morris’s vision.

Grafton

Wreath intertwines across the surface

Honeysuckle

This large direction print is one of at least two honeysuckle prints by Morris and Company.We used a black background for drama.


Morris & Company will inspire all who love the Arts and Crafts look for quilts, clothing and decorating.
See more by clicking here:

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