Diamonds: BFF

Deb Rowden's copy (left)  of an antique quilt from my collection

The orange zig-zag craze around here may be over but we 

are still thinking diamonds.

Kathe Dougherty's copy of the antique quilt

The vintage orange zig-zag

Karla still has some rows to connect

My 18" x 20" mini

Some of us have a lot of 1-1/4" paper pieces left.

A little inspiration:

Ohio Amish from the Faith & Steven Brown Collection

Some of these are 45 degree diamonds and some 60 degree.

It doesn't really matter which you use---as long as you choose one or the other.

Connecticut project & the Quilt Index

Modifying a 1930s pattern. Threadneedle Street.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/11/threadneedle-street-free-pattern-for.html

McLin Family, Washington County, Tennessee

From eBay seller gb-best

All diamonds

Janae Bissinger's Streamers

for McCall's Quilting

Wowza!

Log Cabins-McCall's Quilting

I have an article in the May/June 2018 issue of McCall's Quilting---a 2-page history of the log cabin design.

The magazine has several patterns for some graphic variations.

See more about the issue here:
https://www.quiltingcompany.com/store/mccall-s-quilting-may-june-2018-print-edition

It's all a good excuse to show you 12 great vintage log cabin quilts---mostly found in online auctions.

Wool, early 20th c?

More of the same.

1940-60?

1870-1890

Below two Half-A-Logs (really 1/4 of a log)

1920s?

1930s

Housetops About 1900

It says Hitty and it's a doll quilt, maybe 1880-1900

From eBay seller French72 Antiques

From Laura Fisher Quilts

Posts I've done about the pattern:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/03/log-cabin-how-old-is-name.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/08/half-log-history-and-free-pattern.html

Past Perfect: Judie Rothermel

April's Past Perfect featured quilt designer is Judie Rothermel.

Judie has been designing reproduction fabrics since 1987.

She's done many collections of Aunt Grace 1930s's repro prints.

Tea Leaves

And lots of miniature quilts

How many repro lines in 31 years!

What a gift for us traditional quiltmakers.

Sturbridge Stars

Her lines and quilt designs range across the 19th century and into the 20th.

Thirteen Stars from 2007.

Her quilts are often simple patchwork making the most of

 old-fashioned prints.

Stars & Bars

Centennial Quilt

She's known for her samplers too.

Heirloom Applique

Judie's Album Quilt

Judie's inspiration has been antique quilts from her own collection and from museums such as Old Sturbridge Village and the New England Quilt Museum. She and husband Bob ran the Schoolhouse Quilt Shoppe in Canton, Ohio for decades.

The shop is now open by appointment only.
http://www.schoolhousequilts.com/

Thanks to Judie and Marcus Brothers for providing us with so much of our stash of repro prints.

Nineteenth Century Schooldresses

One of her latest lines

Solar System Quilt

Solar System

E.H.Baker

A.D. 1876

Collection of the Smithsonian Institution

In 1866 Nathan Mills gave a lecture at a Quaker meeting house in Iowa. According to the church history, "The subject of his lecture was 'Astronomy.' The chart he used was a bed quilt so quilted as to represent the solar system."

Perhaps his visual aid looked much like Ellen Harding Baker's Solar System Quilt pictured above.
Sarah Ellen Harding Baker was living in Cedar County, Iowa ten years later in 1876, the date on this wool quilt.

She may be the "Iowa woman" referred to in an article copied in several newspapers in the winter of 1883-1884. "An Iowa woman has spent seven years in embroidering a solar system on a quilt."

Sarah Ellen Harding Baker (1847-1886)

From the Smithsonian's site

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556183

Had she started in 1876, seven years would make it 1883. Ellen Baker was busy in those years raising her five surviving children and embroidering stars.

An "astronomical quilt" was not that unusual. In 1853 the Washington Mechanics' Fair Instititute  listed many quilts shown at their first exhibit, among them M.F. Saffel's "astronomical quilt."

Eliza Sumner's 1848 "Family Register Quilt" 

also includes "A Representation of the Starry Heavens" and 

"The Sun and its Rays in their irregular order."

The quilt was documented by the Massachusetts project and featured in their book Massachusetts Quilts: Our Commonwealth. Eliza (1802-1856) lived in Spencer, Massachusetts

http://www.massquilts.org/Docs/Sumner_Essay.pdf

An 1873 story in the Chicago Tribune featured a Celestial Bed Quilt with no pictures.

  

Sold at Carlsen Gallery Auction

Quilt by an unknown maker representing the sun and
seven planets in circular orbits. Mars, perhaps, or
Mercury is red; Jupiter has stripes; Saturn rings and moons.

From Woodard & Greenstein

Suns, moons and stars are not unusual choices for

quiltmakers

From Laura Fisher

From James Cox Antiques

But most seem to have no scientific function.

A celestial chart from 1834

E.H. Baker is buried in the Lone Tree Cemetery in Johnson County, Iowa.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/164095179/sarah-ellen-baker

I'd make one but I'd have to decide whether to include Pluto or not.