Forty Years Ago This Month

A few weeks ago I wrote about Jinny Beyer as an inspiration for traditional quiltmakers over the past forty years. I looked up her ground-breaking quilt "Ray of Light" first published in Good Housekeeping magazine in March, 1978 as top prize winner in their quilt contest and realized we have an anniversary to mark.

It has been forty years since that contest, which was a big deal at the time. Nearly 10,000 quilters entered. Jinny's first prize of $2,500 was a lot of money. (My house cost $15,500 a few years earlier.) The contest undoubtedly added to the widening of interest in quiltmaking as an art form.

Chris Wolf Edmonds won the Kansas prize.

I knew some quiltmakers who entered and a couple of them won prizes, which were based on states and sections of the country.

And Erma H. Kirkpatrick the North Carolina first.

Quilt historians have used contests to get a snapshot of the community aesthetic at a certain point in time. Merikay Waldvogel and I studied the 1933 Chicago World's Fair contest fifty years later, so this is a good time to look at the 1970s trends.

The magazine published the 51 winners (50 states plus the grand prize) in the March issue with Dinah Shore on the cover.

Sunburst by Helen Downs of Indiana

Quilting, hard to see in the photos, must have had some influence in the judging. 

Of course, hand quilting was the standard. 

Machine quilting had absolutely no cachet at the time.

Caroline Riddle's "Quilted Montage" won the Tennessee prize.

Pictorial images were quite popular...

...Influenced no doubt by the 1976 fashion for pictorial Bicentennial quilts illustrating local scenery and history, such as the Rockport Bicentennial Garden Club's winner for Maine.

Of the 43 pictures I saw 26 were primarily applique. Two seemed to be of found objects (labels and drawings) and 1 was wholecloth. 11 were pieced and 2 were a combination of piecing and applique, as in this Engagement Ring or Whig's Defeat quilt by Margaret G. Brown of New Orleans.

If we throw the "pieced & appliqued" in with the pieced we have 26 applique and 13 pieced, twice as many applique quilts as pieced.

Vickie Milton's Five Star is pieced and appliqued.

White as a neutral dominates the color palette throughout the pages.

A few like the Flower Basket differed from the fashion for white.

Amy Gelbach's Sun (above) and Lisa Courtney's Confetti reflected oranges and blues

Not many explored color as well as pattern.

Very few were without white.

It's hard to see from the photos so I really can't say much about the choice of prints versus solids.

If the fabrics were printed they were generally prints that

read as solids.

Hats & Patches by Susan Jane Jones of Oregon was an exception.

This 1978 contest gives us a good view of what was valued and how things have changed.

Mrs. Jinny Beyer in a patchwork vest.

Here's a change. 

We don't refer to artists by Miss or Mrs. anymore. Marital status is not relevant.

I did some poking around in internet photos to get a wider view of 1978. I wanted some photos of interior decor to show how horrible it all was (as I recall.) My $15,000 house was a Victorian cottage and I decorated it into a period gingerbread concoction---a reaction to the sterility and shallowness of 1970s decorating of my parents' generations. So here are some photos of the 1970s decorating I abhorred.

Joan & Walter Mondale, Vice President and wife

Where are the Tchotchkes?

Ladies in hats

The nylons may never come back but I'd love to have that coffee table.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1972 

She's really more my generation but look at that living room!

My current house, built in 1970, looks just like this. Have we come full circle in forty years?

Certainly in interior design.

But in quilts too?

Lots of white,

Emphasis on solid fabrics

See an article about the contest at the Quilt Index:
http://www.quiltindex.org/ephemera_full_display.php?kid=1E-A3-7D5