Daughters of Liberty Anniversary Quilt

 

Daughters of Liberty

Looking for a traditional patchwork design for a quilt to celebrate our 250th next month? I'll remind you again that Americans really were not stitching patchwork quilts in 1776 but here's a design to represent later decades when the United States was working out its democratic ideals after the Revolution.

The roads that led to revolt against England's rule ran throughout the colonies but Boston claims a leadership role, particularly with the local organization the Sons of Liberty, a secret and not so secret society of philosophers and activists. (Just who threw that English tea into the harbor?)

Exemplary rebels

The Sons of Liberty encouraged a trade boycott of British goods including the largest category of  textiles, wool, linen and silk. In 1768 the rebels organized a boycott encouraging colonists to cultivate their own flax for linen and sheep for wool and learn to spin and weave a domestic cloth, activities Britain had discouraged in their desire to make the colonies customers rather than competition. Women responded to the men's call by organizing "spinning bees" where two or three dozen spinners worked together teaching each other techniques and producing yarn for domestic cloth.

From a Boston broadside published about 1770

Women also countered with their own organization The Daughters of Liberty in 1770. Similar goals and methods of operation included domestic production but also street activism and campaigns against merchants who ignored their demands. Mobs of men and women intimidated loyalist shop owners and warehouse keepers.

Broadsides, the influential social media of the day,

could be printed quickly and cheaply and posted on the streets.

Abigail Smith Adams wrote husband John about the "rout and noise in the town for several weeks" culminating in a mob of about 100 females who broke into a coffee warehouse and confiscated the beans as "a large concourse of men stood amazed silent spectators."

Massachusetts Historical Society Collection

Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) 

By Benjamin Blythe, mid-1760s 

Shops and warehouses that imported foodstuffs like molasses and salt as well as those vending cloth were frequent targets of the Daughters of Liberty who amazed their co-revolutionaries with bold and boisterous protests on Boston's streets.

"Boston Streets" is the name of the central patchwork pattern here, adapted from one published in 1936 in the Chicago Tribune's quilt column headed by the fictional Nancy Cabot with her prestigious Boston penname.

"Nancy" often made up stories out of whole cloth

like this one about an unlikely Boston quiltmaker before the Revolution.

The pattern is slightly familiar but the repeat is obtuse.

The sketch looks quite un-pieceable but adding seams to make the design just squares and HSTs (Half-Square Triangles) makes it easier to piece if not a historically accurate choice to represent those brazen  Daughters of  Liberty. The patchwork center has been fit into a format borrowed from the Copp Quilt in the Smithsonian's collection.

National Museum of American History Collection

Copp Family Framed Center Quilt

https://www.si.edu/object/1790-1810-copp-familys-framed-center-pieced-quilt%3Anmah_556289

The museum was given a large collection of textiles and furniture in the 1890s by John Brenton Copp of Stonington, Connecticut including this quilt estimated to date from the early 19th century. Fabrics of linen, silk and cotton were probably scraps and yardage from the inventory of the family textile businesses. The Copps were from Connecticut but Boston's streets do include a Copp's Hill.

The geometry here is based on units finishing to 4" square. 

Pattern for Daughters of Liberty

The Central Patchwork Field

You can look at the central field of patchwork as a grid of 9 blocks, each a five-patch,

a grid of 25.

Modified Boston Streets five-patch block

Drawn in EQ8

Basic unit finishes to 4" square

Print the pattern out on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.

Fabrics---see the Copp quilt with its varieties of browns, pinks and blues.

Or the heck with authenticity!

It's a party. Make it red, white & blue!

Another option for a loosely historical repro quilt for the 250th.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2026/01/american-quilt-style-democracy-blooms.html

And one from our Dutch history:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/12/early-american-quilts-knickerbocker.html

Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks & Ada Cone

Newspaper quilt patterns of the 1930s were abundant with a few large syndicated companies dominating the field. Patterns appearing under the pen names Laura Wheeler and Alice Brooks were probably the most numerous. The source and the people involved have been rather mysterious as newspaper copy did not give much information on a company, designers or copywriters.

A few of my pattern collecting friends have, shall we say, opinions as to the

mindset of these fictional seamstresses. Just a bit sadistic in the promise of

"easy piecing" with twelve seams meeting in the center, for example.

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/08/alice-brooks-design.html

Representative fictional artist

You do get the feeling that the artist in many cases had never pieced a quilt in his/her life.

 Wilene Smith, however, has devoted many years of serious study to figuring out the writers and artists behind the series. Her work is available on the Quilt Index at this link:

kora.quiltindex.org/files/34-136-86/41-LauraWheeler.pdf

The 1940 census found Ada at 22 living with her parents Robert & Ada Cone and four brothers on Sinclair Avenue on Staten Island. The family seems to be in the grocery business. Her occupational listing may say "Not Working" or "New Worker".

Helen Dudnik in Staunton, Virginia News Leader, June 7, 1945
(Note that the columnist’s actual name Ada L. Cone is not included.)

“Knits and purls, chains and slip stitches lazy dasies (sic) and french knots. They’re all easy when you know how. And women who don’t ask Laura Wheeler, the knit crochet, and embroider genius. An average of ten million women each year write to Laura Wheeler for instructions for knitting that baby bonnet they saw in yesterday’s newspaper. She receives more mail than some of our top-ranking Betty Grables or Lana Turners.

Recently Laura Wheeler received a letter from a grandmother who wanted her to know that within a comparatively short period of time she had ordered seventy-two patchwork quilt patterns---all created by Miss Wheeler. Grandma, as she signed herself, went on to say that she was making twelve quilts for each of her twelve granddaughters and that soon she could present the gifts to ‘her girls’ whom she knew would be delighted with them.

Laura Wheeler’s name is known to millions of newspaper readers. She is discussed by countless women everyday---over back fences, notions counters and scores of other places where women and girls congregate. In 1933 Laura Wheeler decided to close her own art studio and become the pioneer needlecraft designer in the field. When she started with George Goldsmith, his Reader Mail organization was fast becoming America’s leading newspaper dress pattern manufacturers.

One day she asked of Goldsmith, “Why should we produce only dress patterns? There are millions of women who like to knit, crochet, and embroider. Why can’t we manufacture needlecraft patterns for them?’

And so it was that Laura Wheeler gave birth to an idea which was to revolutionize the art of needlework. She gathered a staff of skilled artists and designers who set to work under her direction, creating original designs for transfer patterns to be embroidered on guest towels, pillow cases and doilies----patterns for many kinds of knitted garments---crochet patterns for centerpieces, fascinators, slippers or bootees.

She hired top-notch writers to describe step by step, clear and precise directions for each kind of stitch in a particular design. As many as ten artists work on a single pattern.

Says Laura Wheeler, ‘When a reader sees my release in her newspaper and sends 15 cents for my needlecraft pattern, it is my job to see that not only will she get it promptly but when the pattern does reach her she can be assured that there will be no need to stop and question the next step.’

Added Miss Wheeler, ‘Every one of my needlecraft patterns is fool proof so that even a novice will have no difficulty finishing the sweater, purse or rag dolls she started.’

She stresses the practicability of her feature. ‘I try to put myself in the position of the reader. She wants eye-appealing needlecraft patterns which can be made as inexpensively as possible and that is what I strive to give her.’

Laura Wheeler is a typical American woman. She is of medium height with black hair streaked with gray, sparkling dark eyes and an effervescent personality. Laura feels she is amply repaid for her life’s work of creating needlecraft patterns when those millions of letters come pouring into her office---letters from women all over the country asking for more patterns, letters from grateful readers telling of the joys her designs have brought them. 
When the war is over, Laura Wheeler plans to make her needlecraft pattern feature available not only in the United States, Canada and Australia but in other European countries as well."

From Ada's Findagrave files:

"Ada Cone, 83, of Oakwood, a native Staten Islander and retired fashion designer, died Friday at Merry Heart Nursing Home in Succasunna, New Jersey. Born in Prince's Bay, she moved to Oakwood in 1961. Last February, she moved to Blairstown, New Jersey. She had been a resident of the nursing home since November. A fashion designer, Ms. Cone worked for approximately twenty years with the reader-mail division of King Features Syndicate, Manhattan. She designed clothing and sewing patterns for the "Let's Sew" segment, which appeared in newspaper comic sections around the country, including the Sunday Advance. She retired in 1985. She attended Tottenville High School. She is survived by a niece and two nephews. The funeral will be held on Tuesday, with a service at 9:30 a.m. in the Casey Funeral Home, Castleton Corners. Burial will be in Moravian Cemetery, New Dorp.
Published in the Staten Island Advance on January 7, 2001."

https://bitsofhistory.vintageknitcrochet.net/2018/05/laura-wheeler-genius-of-needlecraft.html

I've done posts on several of the patterns over the years.

See posts if you are looking for a challenging pattern:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/01/alice-brooks-darn-her.html

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/01/butterfly-from-laura-wheeleralice-brooks.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2021/12/link-of-friendship-supply-chain.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/07/callis-question-endless-chain.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/12/crazy-wheel-of-fortune.html

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2021/05/setting-sun.html

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/09/lovers-knot.html

As Jeannie has commented on one of the "easy patterns:" 

"On my Quilt Bucket List, someday when I WANT to do zillions of set-in seams :)"

Queen Charlotte's Crown: Centuries of Historical Inaccuracy

Queen Charlotte's Crown in Morris Muse fabrics from Moda, Morris & Me

 National Galleries of Scotland  

 Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

 as England's new Queen, 1761 or 1762 by Allan Ramsey.

Several copies of this bride's portrait are in museums.

I have been wiling away my May afternoons reading for the second time Janice Hadlow's 2015 biography of the royal family of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Well written, flows nicely and historically supportable. Perfect. I'm only up to the year 1761 and Charlotte's marriage and I know things get tough. Mad King George had mental health issues, shall we say, all his life as far as I am concerned---no late onset porphyry. But they had a happy marriage for quite a while (if a few too many unhappy children).

Perhaps Ruth Finley noticed the Queen's royal headgear in the "Nuptial Crown" portrait when she wrote about a pieced quilt pattern "Queen Charlotte's Crown" in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts.

Finley's block reflects the visual pairings in the "Nuptial Crown."

Queen Charlotte was the last of our Colonial queens and we still have a city named for her. Charlotte, North Carolina (The Queen City) boasts a sculptural portrait with crown in hand at the airport (no more historical basis for the statue than for Ruth Finley's block.)

Charlotte at about 20 with her eldest daughter

the Princess Royal.

The Nancy Cabot quilt column in the Chicago Tribune in 1933

must have used Finley's book for pattern copy.

The gray highlighted area is Finley-style "history."

Both book and newspaper column seem to have fabricated the whole quilt tale, as we might say, out of whole cloth.

The Cabot column modified Finley's design in a later issue,

eliminating the set-in seams.

Queen Charlotte's Crown was not a popular design. Certainly there are none that appear to have been stitched before Finley's 1929 publication date as the design is not the kind of thing one would see in the 18th century here or in England. After Finley published her pattern a few were done, probably because it a bit hard to sew and rather awkward in composition. 

I found a couple of mid-20th c. quilts in the Quilt Index. The Nebraska and Iowa projects recorded some stitched soon after Finley's book was out.

Mary Schafer of Michigan decided the "historical" design would be a perfect pattern for the Bicentennial collection she was stitching before our 200th birthday in 1976. The history is the sort I was raised on: Far-fetched hypotheses, questionable research (if any evidence at all) and sweet stories designed more as propaganda than accurate accounts. (Don't look now but we are living in a revival of the attitude.)

About ten years ago we stitched a Block of the Week on the Austen family of Queen Charlotte's era and included this one.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58240246@N07/albums/72157644301168681/

Austen Family Album

From my latest Moda collection Morris Muse, inspired by Georgann's red block and the focused cutting. 

More Ideas....

Sunrise Quilts used the Nancy Cabot design recently.

Laura Conowitch at LCSCottage.wordpress.com

Blue for Charlotte's German heritage and red for her English role.

Blocks rotated

If you've been watching the streaming series Bridgerton over the past few years you

will be familiar with their plot line that Queen Charlotte was a Black woman, a concept not found in Julia Quinn's series of Bridgerton novels. 

Producers and writers running the series introduced this far-fetched idea made plausible due to the skill of the casting director who matched actor Golda Rosheuvel to the Queen's portraits. Despite her award-nominated acting the historical idea is as unlikely as Rosheuvel's hair-do.

This all seems relatively harmless and perhaps a good idea by the show runners to shake up our preconceived notions

BUT

There is a big problem in the whole concept of the German Charlotte's ancestry even as an obvious fictional trope. The idea was a principle of Nazi racial bigotry, first described in a 1920s book Racial Mixture as the Basic Principle of Life by Artur Ernst Klaar (Penname: Brunold Springer) who decided the Queen's unfashionable facial features were evidence of African ancestry.

"Nordicism," the idea of a master race, was explored in several pseudo-scientific publications in the 1920s. Books like Hans F.K. Gunther's Racial Studies of the German People impressed Himmler and Hitler, informing their ideas on white supremacy threatened by "degenerate" racial mixing. Euthanasia (the Holocaust) developed from concepts of Nordicizing the population and it continues today in unfortunate American rhetoric.

Nazi leadership was delusional about how they fit Nordicism's ideals

I have worked in the movies and know the industry pretty well through friends & family. Producers feel little obligation to give a responsible point of view based on historical accuracy. Their idea has sold well; viewers enjoy the turn-around in casting and nobody recalls Nazi sources for the pseudoscience.

But don't you forget!

Read More

https://royalwatcherblog.com/2023/11/17/queen-charlotte-nuptial-crown/

https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/bridgerton-was-queen-charlotte-black/