Sunflowers & Chintz

From Stella Rubin's inventory.

About 1820-1840

When I dream about getting really good at piecing I dream I will make a quilt like this.

Sunflowers of chintz.

Setting shapes in the quilt above were cut from this popular chintz.

Here's a great sunflower from the Rhode Island Project

using a variation of Swainson's Palm Tree print.

Sunflowers and chintzes: Apparently patchwork fashion in the 1820-1840s. The busy quilts give you a glimpse of decorating taste at the time.

Collection of the Marquette Regional History Center.

Michigan Project & the Quilt Index.

Documenters dated it to last quarter of the 19th century

but I'm confused. It certainly fits in with the earlier style and

fabrics.

The link:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-28C4

Like those above it's based on a set of a circle and a squeezed

square rather than a block set....

Circular sunflowers connected with a shape that fits between.

Here in white.

On the diagonal but like Mary Orgain's below.

Quilt signed and dated 1818 Sterling and Mary Orgain

Texas quilt project & the Quilt Index.

Made by Mary Elizabeth Jones Orgain (1801-1878)

Collection of the Briscoe Center

Tastes change and fashion for patterned chintz gave way to more interest in patchwork pattern.

Mary Esther Hoyt Smith's quilt from the Connecticut Project

might be considered transitional taste.

Busy sunflowers and busy chintz confined to square blocks.

See the Connecticut book for photos of her quilt.

Here's the chintz Mary Esther used.

From Jeffrey Evans Auction

Sunflowers may be confined in this masterpiece but some are still busy, busy, busy.

It's a fight between the patchwork and the print.

You can see how a look this distinctive could become old fashioned.

As calico became the thing.

Mid-19th-century taste from Stella Rubin's shop

By Catherine Bennett Tandy, from Mary Barton's collection

Iowa Project and the Quilt Index

From a Pook & Pook Auction

Nice enough, but awfully tame if you love the tension

 between patchwork pattern and printed pattern.

Field of Sunflowers by Gabrielle Paquin

 You might want to make a quilt inspired by the early examples as Gabrielle Paquin has done.

It looks like she used a block

If you want a period look with an all over design (shows off the chintz better)....

Find a Sunflower in a block pattern you like.

This one is BlockBase #3480.

Print templates for the desired size. Instead of cutting the corner shapes as

they appear, fold your chintz fabric in quarters adding seams along the curves and outside edge but

not the lines on the fold.

William Morris-ey

There is also a pattern for a reproduction made by

Carol Gilham Jones in my out-of-print book

America's Printed Fabrics. Carol's is pieced over paper arcs.