QuiltCon 2018 in Pasadena

Sandra Kay, Happy Dance

 won the prize at QuiltCon 2018 in

 Best Machine Quilting Frameless.

My sister (the strawberry blonde on the left) lives near the Pasadena Convention Center where QuiltCon 2018 took place the other day, so I dragged her to a quilt show. It's fun to go with someone who knows nothing about quilts to get her perspective. She has an art degree and she knows what she likes. 

First of all, the show floor was crowded, always a good sign.

We went on the first morning.

I had to explain the whole machine quilting thing. She'd never seen a long arm.

There was lots of fabric for sale in modern brights and grays.

Some of Vanessa Christenson's new solids

The atypical caught my eye. Here's a stack of new

French General fabrics in great floral prints echoing the early 19th century. 

Anything repro of course was in short supply. 

We noticed the emphasis on solid fabrics in the exhibit.

Ohio Snowball on the left by Christine Perrigo

Few entries made use of prints

Color Study H1 by Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Being a traditionalist I have to say my show favorites were

in the Modern Traditionalism category.

Lollipop by Diana Vandeyar

My sister said the last time I took her to a quilt show it was full of pictorial representations of horses, kittens and small children, not to her taste. She was glad to see no puppies on the quilts. Sentimentalism is one thing that modernists past and present disdain.

We ran into several old friends. Here's Moda Lissa and me from

her Instagram page. She's just published a book and I wrote the introductory

chapter on the history of scrap quilts.

Lissa took care of the modernism in fine fashion.

More about Oh, Scrap! soon.

See the winners here:

https://www.quiltcon.com/winners/

And see Carrie's post with lots of photos at the Moda blog:
http://blog.modafabrics.com/2018/02/quiltcon-2018/

Ten Quilts I Wish I'd Made

But I have to confess I didn't. They are mostly

from online auctions

This necktie quilt is a signature quilt

Russel Wright color

Some are cool.

Sally Ingram Parker

from Cuesta Benberry's book

Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans

And some are hot

The perfect quilt

Nine Blocks---Another Nine Block Pattern

Many years ago a family loaned me quilts for photography

including this applique sampler they thought made in Jacksonville, Illinois.

I recognized the pattern as one pictured in Carrie Hall

& Rose Kretsinger's book Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in 1935.

Hall indicated it belonged to Amy Ellen Hall and was made

by Emma Ann Covert of Lebanon, Ohio about 1842.

The similarities were striking. Same 9 blocks (3 patterns)

arranged in the same fashion.

Same vase and vine border.

Here's an almost identical Ohio quilt made in Belmont,

in the collection of the Ohio Historical Society. Note the

extra sprigs around the central wreath.

From an online auction. The corner blocks are oriented the other way.

These 5 red and green applique samplers all look to be about 1840-1870.

A beauty by Hannah Johnson Haines, Jay County, Indiana & Moline, Illinois.

Collection of the Rock Island County Historical Society, Illinois.

Recorded in the Illinois project and pictured in their book.

The Arizona project found one brought from 

Columbia, Missouri. The applique is simpler, cruder and

the border is different. It's tough to say from the photo when this

was made.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=67-EC-790

Mary or Marjorie Galbreath, Uhrichsville, Ohio

These two look to be after 1930 by the pastel colors

Perhaps they saw Emma Covert's in Carrie Hall's book

or they might have ....

Lela L Duckwall Vore, Eaton County, Indiana, found in the Indiana Project

Well, how did they share the pattern???

A few months ago I discussed another 9 block designed in the format of a central block with two other appliques in the north/south axis and the diagonal corner blocks.

Like this. It's a great composition.

See that post here:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/11/nine-blocks-same-nine-blocks.html

I am not the only person to notice what balanced design this is.

The central block in the group we're looking at today is a wreath with

 6 to 11 rotating leaves...

Not a very common pattern.

Here's another from a Double Irish Chain quilt

The corner blocks point the eye towards the center block with

a bouquet on an entwined stem and, in most of them, a circle or two of 7 dots.

Applique block from a quilt about 1900

The entwined stem is seen elsewhere but that combination of 

7 dots and the layout seems unique to this pattern.

The flower pots look like they have a dish to catch the drips underneath.

The paired florals also feature a group of 7 dots.

This sampler has been on my wanna make it list for years---I digitized some of the blocks for a start on a pattern. These should print at 8 inches and if you double that you'd have applique to fit a 16" or 18" block. 3 x 3 at 18" would equal 54" without any border.

Sandy Sutton did this remarkable small version for 

American Quilt Study Group's 2016 quilt

study focused on baskets. Repro quilt perfection!

Frances Shaw, attributed to Hagerstown, Maryland.

Found in the West Virginia project.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-6E4

The border on these nine block quilts is a whole 'nother question. It's quite distinctive but not unique to this particular sampler. The West Virginia project saw many examples. Documenter Fawn Valentine nicknamed it the I-70 Border because the locations follow today's highway that was once the National Road---the major east/west travel path now and in the past. Xenia Cord is going to give a paper on the border at AQSG this fall.

Here's an 1850s map of the U.S. with an orange star

for every place mentioned in the sampler quilt histories above.

A national road of pattern sharing.

But what form of pattern?

Hollyhocks & Cut-out Chintz

The Georgia Quilt Project documented this tree-of-life chintz quilt dated 1824 as one
of the earliest Georgia quilts they saw. It's by Mary Elizabeth Clayton Miller Taylor and in the collection of Savannah's Telfair Museum.

"William Taylor. From his Grandmother. 1824"

Read more about it in Georgia Quilts. See a book preview here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZSfI2Nf_uPkC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=mary+taylor+quilt+telfair&source=bl&ots=VwcZgPkFjY&sig=j_z37jb3rGQvUO6af9IxAfEtdMU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCg6708_TUAhUi_4MKHYvWBVIQ6AEIRTAF#v=onepage&q=mary%20taylor%20quilt%20telfair&f=false

The leafy fabric at the base of the tree caught my eye. Geranium leaves?

Or Hollyhocks?

Hollyhock and leaves.

Looks like hollyhocks.

Mary Taylor was not the only woman to see potential in that hollyhock chintz. Another Miller, Sarah Miller of Charleston, South Carolina made a similar quilt.

Sarah's quilt was pictured in Florence Peto's 1949 book Quilts & Coverlets.

Peto, a quilt collector and dealer, sold Sarah's quilt to the Shelburne Museum.

"Sarah F.C.H. Miller

1830"

Some read this signature as Sarah T.C. Miller,

but I think Peto's guess of F.C.H. is correct.

Here is the hollyhock leaf base for another cut-out chintz quilt---a tree of roses in

 the collection of Drake House Museum in Plainfield, New Jersey.

Plainfield is about 30 miles from New York City.

The  rose tree is said to have been made by a daughter of John Hart, a New Jersey signer of the Declaration of Independence.

I don't see any hollyhock blooms or buds in this quilt but the

leaves resting on a dark ground are similar.

Hart and wife Deborah Scudder had at least 7 daughters among their 13 children: Sara, Jesse, Martha, Susannah, Mary, Abigail, Debra.
http://www.drakehouseplainfieldnj.org/collection.html

#1991.0358

We know even less about another example in the collection

of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

But we have a great online view of the leafy base of the "tree"

and get a glimpse of what the original chintz must have looked like.

The quilt was donated in 1991 by Mrs. Robert B. Stephens. Somewhere I've seen that it was found in Massachusetts. 

Trolling for hollyhock fabrics I came across this 1833

tree chintz quilt from the Charleston Museum.

Margaret Seyle Burges (1804-1877)

#2010.37.1 Charleston Museum

She used a different base but the hollyhocks are on the branches.

The quilt is inscribed "Burges/Dec 1833" on the reverse.

http://www.charlestonmuseum.org/research/collection/tree-of-life-quilt/946C8730-F883-492C-BF6F-401810876704

Quilt by Mary Eldred Mumford  (?-1874)

Newport, Rhode Island

Detroit Historical Museum

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-585

This one is hard to see in the Quilt Index photo. There's a better photo in Phyllis Haders's Warner Collector's Guide to American Quilts showing a few hollyhocks growing out of a base of leaves.

Here we have six cut-out chintz quilts related by the hollyhock fabric and general tree-of-life style with three dated examples: 1824, 1830 and 1833.

That information would help us date the hollyhock fabric if I knew what it looked like. For all the quilts with the fabric I cannot find a picture of the yardage or a whole cloth quilt.

The fabric is undoubtedly imported and quite likely to have been English. The quilts' locations reflect access to imported prints in port cities from Newport and Plainfield to Charleston and Savannah, but how did Mary Mumford in Rhode Island and Mary Taylor in Georgia come to use the fabric in such similar fashion? 

Could they have known each other?  If the women were of the same age I'd guess they attended a boarding school together, but Mary Taylor was a generation or two older than Mary Mumford and Margaret Burges.

Many mysteries, but I am keeping my eye out for the hollyhock chintz.