W.P.A. Quilt Paintings

Louise Kent,Log Cabin Detail

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

I came across a wonderful little exhibit of watercolors at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library's Sabatini Gallery, where they are displaying several watercolors of antique quilts painted for the Index of American Design about 1939 or '40.

The show is up through September 22.

Louise Kent, Log Cabin Detail

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

The federal government, through the WPA, hired artists to document American Decorative Arts at a time when color film was unreliable.

Louise Kent, Log Cabin 

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

A Margaret Louise Kent is listed in the WPA biographes

as having been born in Clovis, New Mexico, September 14, 1913.

Studied at Washburn College, Topeka.

It's hard to believe these are watercolors. I have never seen any in real life before and it was interesting to see that they are drawn and then painted in. A lot of the quilting lines are done in pencil.

Louise Kent, Log Moon and Stars

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

I have blogged about the Index of American Design before. Click here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/09/index-of-american-design.html

Unknown artist

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

It seems these women were Kansas artists, painting Kansas quilts. I could find little biographical information about any of them.

Ethel Lillian Gray

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

Mary Hockett, Noon Day Lily

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

Norma Lockwood, English Ivy

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

The Library's Flickr page features a larger photo of this painting with the following

biography:

"About Norma Lockwood (1897 – 1973)
Lockwood grew up in Baldwin, Kansas, and lived all her life in Kansas. She was a graduate of Baker University, and worked as an artist at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, illustrating magazine covers and children's books. She worked as a WPA artist in KS in 1939. Lockwood participated in the 11th Annual Kansas Artists exhibit in 1936.

This 1850 double bed quilt was owned by Mrs. Carrie Meyer of Topeka, Kansas. The original owner and maker was Allie Lockwood of College Springs, Iowa."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/topekalibrary/2916449083/

Marguerite R. Wright, Daisy

Watercolor for the W.P.A., about 1940

The Merchant's Wife Reproduction Prints

Quilt top that inspired The Merchant's Wife

Collection of Terry Clothier Thompson

Have you seen this reproduction collection from my former design partner

Terry Clothier Thompson?

She has taken a top from about 1840, which she bought in Maine years ago,

and reproduced several prints for a reproduction line called

The Merchant's Wife

It's full of rainbow or ombre stripes

in Prussian blue.

Antique album block with the same kinds

of Prussian Blue stripes

Reproduction.

The large stripes were quite fashionable in the 

1840s and '50s.

Antique

Quilt about 1840-1860

Reproductions

\

Quilt, about 1840-1860

These fondu prints or rainbow prints are hard to reproduce; 

there is so much going on in the print.

Here's a sketch for a reproduction quilt inspired by the original top.

And another sketch called The Merchant's Star that I found online.

A link to another new quilt in Quilters' World:

http://www.quiltersworld.com/patterns/pdfs/M08179_ThriftShoppe.pdf

I think I will mix these with my latest Civil War Jubilee line---the stripes will make terrific sashing.

See some more reasons why you need this line of fabric at Lisa's post at Stray Threads

http://quilltr.blogspot.com/2010/08/1840-1860-quilt-styles.html

Half a Log History and Free Pattern

Housetops by Deb Rowden

2010

Deb's wall quilt is one of my favorite quilts.

Vintage quilt top---1950s

Her inspiration was a four-block quilt based on the half-a-log cabin

much like the one above.

Wool Half-a-Log, about 1910

Now a Half-a-Log is actually a quarter of a log cabin block.

The pattern doesn't have a BlockBase number because I indexed

published patterns and nobody published a name until after 1970

after I stopped indexing.

But the pattern did exist back into the 1880s or so.

Here's a top I own from the 1940s or '50s

And a similar shading arrangement from perhaps the late 19th-century.

It's one of the vernacular patterns or folk patterns

that was passed around outside the commercial pattern network.

You don't see many vintage half-a-log-cabin quilts

although it's an easier pattern than the traditional full log-cabin block.

No set-in seams.

This one looks to be about 1890

Here's a fabulous example from around the same time.

A great asymmetrical composition from the 1940s or '50s with extra-

wide sashing strips.

 

Chrome orange and white, 

a tied version from about 1900 in which she

actually used a ruler.

The pattern is very popular today because we've all been inspired by the Quilts of Gee's Bend,

Which is why we call them Half-A-Log. 

That's what they call them in Gee's Bend, Alabama.

The pattern seems to have been a favorite of the Pettway family.

The quilt above was made by Lillie Mae Pettway.

Here's one by Rita Mae Pettway,

about 1975

And a full-size quilt made of one block by

Lucy Pettway in 1945

I have a lot of 2-1/2" strips so I am thinking of making one using my

Civil War Jubilee repros for the darks...

 and adding lights from the Moda line Mill Book Series Circa 1835,

plus a Turkey red repro from Moda's Bella Solids line

(Christmas Red #9900-16).

My inspiration is Becky Brown's log cabin below.

Courthouse Steps by

Becky Brown

Each month Becky comes up with a block for her quilt group to stitch. She made up 30 kits (2" cut strips) so her friends could make 4 blocks each for their quilts for vets project. Yay, Becky! Yay, Friends!

14" Finished Block

Add the logs in the order shown beginning with the square 1

Here's the cutting information---if you wanted to use a ruler.

You cut the strips one width (2-1/2") or use a Moda Jellyroll precut pack.

There's a formula here. You add to the length of the strips in 2" increments (6, 8, 10 etc)

1 - Cut 1 square 6-1/2"

2 - Cut 1 strip 2-1/2" x 6-1/2"

3 & 4 - Cut 2 strips 2-1/2" x 8-1/2"

5 & 6 - Cut 2 strips 2-1/2" x 10-1/2"

7&8 - Cut 2 strips 2-1/2" x 12-1/2"

9 - Cut 1 strip 2-1/2" x 14-1/2"

Rather than measuring you could just add the 2-1/2" strips and trim.

And keep going the way Lucy Pettway did for her one-block bed quilt above.

A mid-20th-century version from the Quilt Complex

See a contemporary version by Linda Nussbaum here:

http://creativentropy.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-space.html

And for a whole different direction see this collage by Sandy Donabed:

http://www.sandydonabed.com/collagequiltsDetail.php?siID=190

Here's another post I wrote about the Half-a-Log here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/05/quarter-log-cabin-or-half-log.html

Fabric Retailing: The Rag Fair

Recycling is a new term for an old cog in the wheel of textile consumption.

The center of the used clothing market in England for centuries was a street market named Rag Fair, originally situated in Rosemary Lane in London. When the Tower Bridge was built in the 1880s the Rag Fair moved to Houndsditch. Rather than being a temporary fair it was an open air market lined with shops specializing in reselling used clothing.

 (Don't you love it when all the thrift stores are in one neighborhood?)

Rag Fair on Rosemary Lane

Late 18th century Thomas Rowlandson

In writing about Rosemary Lane in 1842 James Grant found Rag Fair's origins impossible to ascertain.

 "That it has existed for centuries is beyond question.... It is held every day in the week, Saturday and Sunday excepted. The reason why there is no fair on Saturday is, that the Jews, by whom it is chiefly frequented, hold their Sabbath on that day. The reason of its not being held on our Sunday is, that the law, or rather the local authorities, will not allow it."

 

We'd call it recycling now, a name rather recently applied to re-using waste. 

High Change Rag Fair

by Thomas Bowles

 A new term had to be generated because many of the old names cast aspersions on the fabric aftermarket. 

Pushcarts moved used clothing and fabric around

New York City, about 1900

Library of Congress

Rag picking is an insult that comes to mind.

It was never a noble occupation and often confined

to African-Americans, Jews and women

who were not permitted to work in other occupations.

 In the past no one above the sheer poverty level admitted they bought used clothing.

You can see the outside display in London has caught

 the eye of the woman on the left walking by.

Here's an exception:

Twenty-one year-old Lady Charlotte Canning, who would be one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, wrote her grandmother in 1838 of a trip to Venice. She and a friend "have come to great disgrace among the connoisseurs here for insisting on going two days running to the Old Clothes Shops...I know very well that you & Mama would have followed our faction---so I may confess that we bought 4 beautiful old gowns, not very dirty...They assured us that all of them belonged once to the Doge's wives!!"

I'd take Charlotte (and her grandma) along on a road trip.

See friend Rosie's impressive collection of thrift-shop shirt fabrics at Deb Rowden's blog:

http://debrowden.blogspot.com/2013/05/rosies-collection.html

Log Cabin by Rosie Mayhew