Our Quilts to International Quilt Museum

Block from War & Pieces

designed by Barbara Brackman and Karla Menaugh,

stitched by Karla, hand quilted by Anne Thomas 1998-1999

 
Karla Menaugh & I are thrilled to announce that the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, will be accessioning eight quilts that served as models for our Sunflower Pattern Co-operative pattern company, which we began in the late 1990s. 

War & Pieces

Cactus & Cottonwood

Designed by Barbara Brackman, Machine pieced and appliqued by Karla Menaugh,

Machine quilted by Lori Kukuk, 2004

We employed about a dozen Kansas City area quilters and designers in our updated cottage industry, reviving a traditional economic model crafted by KC companies such as Aunt Martha's Studios, Ruby Short McKim Studios, and Workbasket magazine in the 1930s. 

Those entrepreneurs formalized the age-old system of women earning a living in cottage industries with sewing and needlework. Our Sunflower stitchers included mothers of young children, part-time workers looking for more income, and innovative people who loved to sew.

Primitive Paradise Designed by Barbara Brackman, 

Machine pieced and appliqued by Karla Menaugh,

Machine quilted by Sharyn Rigg, 2000

Sunflower style was retro with a twist. We looked back at antique quilts for inspiration, updating the look with new color schemes, innovative layouts, and stylized redrafts of typical patterns like vines and stars. Sunflower Pattern Co-op’s patterns and books were popular, aided by my fabric design work for United Notions/Moda fabrics with quilts stitched in the same season that new collections of cotton prints were released.

Detail of Primitive Paradise

We designed many of the quilts with Barbara's Moda fabric line available at the time and commissioned needlewomen such as Pam Mayfield, Shauna Christensen, Jean Stanclift, and Shirlene Wedd to stitch designs or create their own patterns. Tops went to machine quilters Lori Kukuk, Jeanne Zyck, and Rosie Mayhew plus an occasional hand quilter like Anne Thomas. 

Oriental Poppy, Designed & hand appliqued by Barbara Brackman, 

Pieced and machine quilted by Pamela Mayfield, 2010

Sweet Harmony Designed by Barbara Brackman, 

Machine pieced & appliqued by Karla Menaugh & Jean Stanclift.

Machine quilted by Lori Kukuk, 2002

We offered several crib size quilts based on antique examples.

Midnight Garden Designed by Barbara Brackman, 

Machine appliqued by Karla Menaugh

Machine quilted by Lori Kukuk, 2003

The quilts going to the International Quilt Museum represent several eras in United States history. Some, like our War & Pieces sampler and Midnight Garden, reflect themes found in Civil War quilts. Others were inspired by the 1876 U.S. Centennial and the work of Emporia, Kansas, designer Rose Kretsinger and her neighbors in the mid-twentieth century. 

Oriental Poppy Pattern inspired by Rose Kretsinger's in the 

Helen F. Spencer Museum of  Art at the University of Kansas

New Century Garden Designed by Barbara Brackman, 

Machine appliqued by Karla Menaugh

Machine quilted by Lori Kukuk, 2002

New Century Garden is a teaching tool for machine appliqué, starting with an easy to-sew block and continuing with more challenging motifs.

New Century Garden

Juniper & Mistletoe

Juniper & Mistletoe, Designed by Karla Menaugh & Barbara Brackman, 

Machine appliqued by Karla Menaugh.

Machine quilted by Lori Kukuk 2006

And Juniper & Mistletoe was just for fun as we love the variety of trees and birds we see in antique quilts---a forest of light hearted inspiration. We are pleased to keep this small collection of quilts together as a reflection of the contemporary home sewing industry, an important thread of needlework in women’s history.

Morris Muse: Elizabeth Burden

Angel with Cymbals

Embroidered by Elizabeth Burden (1841 – 1924)

(Perhaps a fitting portrait of the embroiderer)

Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden was another of the women embroidery artists, the Morris Muses who worked with designer William Morris. 

Morris Muse fabrics in a pattern named Brunswick Star

by Ruth Finley and Comfort magazine. BlockBase+ #3805.

In the 1930s the Grandma Dexter pattern company called it

Rolling Stone, a good place to start with a pattern

for Muse Elizabeth Burden.

As William Morris's wife's sister Bessie seems to have played an unusual role in the needlework partnership, designing her own panels with an emphasis on human (& angelic figures) rather than floral abstractions.

 

Elizabeth and younger sister Jane Burden Morris were born in Oxfordshire, England into a lower strata of the hierarchy of class-conscious Britain---the working poor. Censuses list father Robert Burden as a servant and a groom for horses in Oxford. With wife Ann Maizey Burden he had four children, Mary Ann, William, Elizabeth and Jane. Only the youngest two lived into adulthood.

Oxford, Near St. Ebbes Church

Jane's unusual beauty caught the attention of 

William Morris's set of young artists. She and Morris married in 1859.

In 1865 father Robert died. Apparently Bessie had been living with him (mother Ann who lived until 1871 is unaccounted for) and at his death Bessie moved in with her younger sister, husband and two girls. Six years later the extended family moved to Queen's Square where their home shared the space with the  company's retail shop.

Like the other muses Bessie embroidered for the shop but few of her pieces---patterns, kits or finished textiles----have been identified.

26 Queen Square by Amédée Forestier

published in William Morris: His Homes & Haunts, 1909

Elizabeth Burden's style: Three panels with design attributed to both Morris and Edward Burne-Jones,

exhibited in 1888 at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.

Bessie was hired to teach embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework in 1873 when she was in her early thirties and moved out of the Morris home to Russell Square, perhaps because her sister's family had moved to a smaller residence.

The Royal School's exhibit at Philadelphia's Centennial Expo 1876

Two years later she was back teaching at the RSN in time to supervise the 

school's display at America's centennial birthday fair, the

1876 Philadelphia Exhibition 

Walter Crane is credited with  design for this hanging

that is said to have been shown in Philadelphia. Embroiderer's

name unknown. Hanging's current whereabouts also unknown.

Candace Thurber Wheeler (1827–1923)

Embroidered furnishings designed by Bessie received a Certificate of Award, inspiring Americans by "sowing the seed" here for art embroidery, according to designer Candace Wheeler who organized New York's Society of Decorative Art based on the London model.

Bessie who relied upon this tapestry stitch was honored by

the school's renaming it the "Burden Stitch" in the RSN’s Handbook of Embroidery\

Lynn Hulsey, expert on Morris embroidery and Elizabeth Morris's biographer, has found comments that paint her as "a prickly professional who refused to compromise her standards, and who was less than adroit in managing her aristocratic employers" at the RSN: Director Lady Victoria Welby and the important Royal patron Princess Helena of Schleswig Holstein, Queen Victoria's daughter.

Lady Victoria Welby, Director of the Royal School

& Princess Helena, the major Royal Patron

Miss Burden and Mrs. Welby, as she was called at the school, disagreed about whether student work should be labeled as that of their teacher. Bessie had a point that that such a credit could make her look bad but she did not make her point well, writing a letter to her supervisor that resulted in the school firing her. The letter has not survived but Mrs. Welby sent a copy to the Princess who was rather indignant. No one could be more class conscious than a Princess and Helena was quite accurate in her analysis. Bessie was neither a lady nor an educated person.

"As to Miss Burden, I think her behaviour simply outrageous. I never read so cool or impertinent a letter. It shows she can have no ladylike feelings for no lady or decently educated person would have penned such a letter."

Miss Burden's skills, however, motivated the school to rehire her two years later despite her "behaving so badly," as RSN founder Madeline Wyndham recalled. "She is the only person who knows how to work the crewel work." And so Elizabeth resumed teaching. She did not stay long past the Philadelphia Exhibition and later in life moved on to Surrey, about 30 miles south of London, probably for a teaching position, where she died in 1924. 

The letter episode was probably just one instance of her temperamental nature. Her brother-in-law 

criticized her "troublesome & complicated accounts concerning designs, materials, & wages" while working for him. He'd earlier written a friend that living with her on Oxford Street was difficult:

"I have been a good deal in the house here - not alone, that would have been pretty well - but alone with poor Bessy. I must say it is a shame, she is quite harmless and even good, and one ought not to be irritated by her - but O my God what I have suffered from finding [her] always there at meals & the like!"

 

Souvenir of household harmony: In 1895 Morris gave Bessie a

three-volume set of Shelley's poetry printed by his Kelmscott Press.

Patterns for Muse Bessie Burden

Notes of Harmony

"At last by notes of household harmony

They quite forget their loss of liberty." 

Shakespeare, Henry VI

A new design inspired by a 1930s pattern from Hubert VerMehren.

Here's a pattern for the fan & star:  Notes of Harmony.

Or a four-patch dot. Any patchwork block finishing to 4-1/2" should fit in the 18" block.

And a floral for Bessie in applique or embroidery.

"Bloomsbury" drawn from a Royal School design.

Print this rather free-form pattern on an 8-1/2 x 11" sheet.

Read More

https://morrissociety.org/wp-content/uploads/22-34ElizabethBurden.pdf

Flag Day

 

June 14th has been celebrated as Flag Day for about 125 years, recalling the date in 1777 when the rebellious colonies adopted the American ensign. 

WPA poster 1939

Elizabeth Holmes, 1869, Illinois. Detail: Lincoln/Flag quilt

About 1860

Following tradition, altered flags express opinion. 

The flag is a great graphic, easily recognizable and composed of pattern that translates while keeping its identity.

One reason the image works so well in the needlework of resistance

that we see today in our troubled times.

Crafty Badger

Social Justice Sewing Academy

"Veer" by Jacquie Gering

Joan Evans

Flags given to Utah politicians

Liz Havartine

?

Shawn Quinlan

Necessary Switch

PineappleKid8

csweb56

About 1865

Jeff Bridgman Antiques

American Revolutionary Samuel Adams wrote in the Boston Gazette:

The patriot's purpose is to "keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not suffer them to be at rest, till the causes of their just complaints are removed."