Uh-Oh!

 

Quilt from the mid-20th-century

Pattern published long before that.

Hexagon Diamond Pattern

A reader of the Prairie Farmer magazine told Mrs. Munson

 that she'd been piecing this design for a long time, first over paper

when a girl and now on her sewing machine, 

which was "a ready helper in making patchwork."

I see this is a reference not in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

(BlockBase+)

But that's not the reason for the "Uh-Oh."

It is where I found the pattern in an 1886 periodical.

The University of Illinois has a digitized collection of "Farm, Field & Fireside" publications.

You could spend hours searching for words like quilt, pattern or patchwork.

There is the problem. Browsing.

No pies getting made around here.

Here's a search for quilt in Prairie Farmer. See time line on the left.

Hmmm.

Here's the link:

https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=p&cltn=FFF&p=collections

Valentines

 

I've been drawing patterns with hearts.

Folded paper designs to stitch in red for Valentine's Day.

The puns on these mid-20th-c valentine cards

made the most of sewing terms.

Hearts & Doves, popular in Ulster, Ireland

Fold fabric in fourths. Cut out this design.

Sew clever.

Early Silk Quilt

 

Center panel in a silk quilt signed Catherine Bradford

Below her name: an eagle?

The panel may have been finished years before the patchwork field of triangles

were added.

Catherine Penniman Bradford's quilt was pictured in the Wisconsin project's book Wisconsin Quilts: History In The Stitches by Ellen Kort.

Catherine Penniman Bradford (1778-1827) Massachusetts

As Catherine died in 1827 we conclude the bedcover was completed in the first quarter of the 19th century. It may have been commenced when she was young at the end of the 18th. Genealogy is confusing because parents named daughters Catherine in her family for many generations and the quilt is said to have been passed on to a succession of Catherines.

Is that William Bradford heading the party in this imaginary 

depiction of the landing in 1620?

One reason this rare piece has survived is that Catherine's husband Charles (1767-1851) was descended from the William Bradford (1590-1657) family of Mayflower fame. It was important because it was associated with New England's "first families."

Charles was born almost 150 years after the famous ship landed in Massachusetts but six or more generations is nothing in ancestor-worshipping culture of New England.

Mayflower descendants

See the quilt at the Quilt Index here:

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=15-11-3466

Mayflower passengers on landing

And the actual history is not so sunny as

stories that are widely preserved.

Catherine Penniman Bradford's husband was a descendant of William's second wife. Bradford's first wife Dorothy May Bradford (1597-1620) drowned soon after the Mayflower landed when she fell or jumped from the ship. I'm voting for jumped. It was all too much. The 23-year-old woman had left her child in England. William was traveling around leaving her on that cold ship in a Massachusetts December. 

Reels, Hickory Leaves and a Soul Knot

 

A popular pattern both pieced and appliqued

As a pieced design the pattern's been published often

with a variety of names as shown in my Encyclopedia of

Pieced Patterns & BlockBase. 

Ruth Finley called it "The Reel"

It also appears in my applique Encyclopedia.

Lately I've been looking at the appliqued versions

where quiltmakers added to the basic design with variety in the additional motifs.

The pattern is one of the earlier American block designs appearing about 1830. In her catalog of the Briscoe Center's quilt collection Katherine Jean Adams discussed a quilt from Joyce Gross's collection, noting that their example seems to have originated in New Jersey.

The Eachus/Hoopes quilt is similar to this common design with

three small leaves added to the North/South axis.

Katherine Jean Adams

I'd guess the design originated in Pennsylvania among German immigrants

and their descendants. These three early examples seem to have come from an

extended Lutheran family in Bucks County/

I am drawing reel structures for my Pop In Applique series, volume 3.

Am I going to sew a Reel/Hickory Leaf?  Did it once in the 1990s.

Photoshopping easier.

The variations are many....

And reels seem to have evolved into other designs.

Read more about the early Pennsylvania versions in a long-ago blog post:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/10/triplets-schleifer-kichlein-fraktur.html

Read Del-Louise Moyer's lengthy post on those quilts:
"Fraktur Quilts from the Schleifer-Kichlein Family"
https://alyssumarts.com/2016/09/04/fraktur-quilts-from-the-schleifer-kichlein-family/

Specialization 4: Why Do I Go On So?

I'm concerned when I see poor scholarship displayed as textile history by museums. The decades-long  completely inaccurate "history" of coded quilt patterns as part of the history of slavery may be a worst-case scenario.

I feel it's important to call out other trends in misguided history such as the current misinformation that weavers in 17th-century Bermuda were producing complex indigo prints. I've mentioned that the Albany Institute in New York is showing an indigo print of the type popular with New Yorkers with the caption that it was printed by weavers on the archipelago of Bermuda in the mid-17th century. See my post of indignation here: 

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-bermuda-triangle-lost-in-confusion.html

Identical misinformation is published in the catalog of an exhibit “Blue Gold” now on view at the Mingei Museum in San Diego. (Through March 16, 2025.) The catalog is available online.

https://publications.mingei.org/blue-gold/

Inside we have the same dubious reference to Bermudans printing complex resist-dyed indigo cottons in the early-17th century. Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory composed of islands in the Atlantic hundreds of miles east of Charleston and north of the "West Indies"

The Evidence:
As early as 1624 it was noted that enslaved people wove homegrown Sea Island cotton into cloth dyed with indigo in Bermuda. A survey from 1626 mentioned "weavers"‘ on 46 acres on Longbird Island, land that was the “tenure and occupation of John Stirrop and Ralph Wright weavers.” Stirrop and Wright are fairly well documented as weavers, "weavers of dimity,” a ribbed cotton that might be plain or printed.

White dimity

Yet nowhere do we see any evidence that Stirrop and Wright were printing on their cotton cloth. When surveyors and biographers classified a skilled mechanic as a weaver---they did NOT mean a printer. The past three posts, I hope, have illustrated that basic principle of specialization clearly.

Shelburne Museum

Without further evidence we will conclude that this style 

of sophisticated indigo resist cotton was an Indian production

 shipped around the world.

Long Bird Island as it was no longer exists. It was bulldozed and transformed into a U.S. Army Base during World War II, making the discovery of any archeological evidence of the weaving industry about impossible to find.

I hate to be a pain...

But really....

Don't museums have the obligation to present current scholarship on textile production?

It is naive to speculate that people identified as weavers also were skilled at printing cotton.

More:

I do go on....

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2024/06/indigo-resist-5-current-scholarship-on.html