Feather and Tulip Cross: An Abundance of Examples

Small quilt shown in 

Classic Crib Quilts and How to Make Them 

by Thomas. K. Woodard & Blanche Greenstein

I indexed the pattern in my Encyclopedia of Applique

with the 4+4 patterns. 

#19.35

Tulip Cross

The pattern was also in Safford & Bishop's book

 as Princess Feather and Tulip

The Princess Feather & Tulip pictured there is this one in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum,

made in Ohio by an unknown quiltmaker according to the caption.

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/282213/

I wish we had a 19th-century name for the pattern because  it was definitely a 19th-century item.

Date inscribed 1856 by Mary E. Byrod Fortenbaugh (1832-1929) 

Collection of the Illinois State Museum

Halifax, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania

The Museum has five quilts by Mary in their collection.

See all five by going to the Quilt Index and typing

Byrod in the top right search box.

http://www.quiltindex.org/search.php

Cover of Quilters Newsletter in 1997

It's a big block, usually seen as a four-block set.

Nice geometry, fills the square block well

The feather's curve helps.

This one may be late-19th century.

Although sometimes the feather is straight,

a variation. This one looks fairly recent.

Then we get into the variations:

Not necessarily a tulip

Quiltmakers could make the pattern simpler or more complex.

 Christina Meyers added a lot in the corners of each block. 

Date-inscribed 1860 in the collection of the

 International Quilt Study Center & Museum

# 2015_053_0001

Date-inscribed 1859 by Huldah Caroline Deat.

The red flower on the feather looks like a botanical Prince's 

Feather.

A sad old top with coxcomb instead of tulip,

Another pattern from mid to late 19th century.

Here's one earlier and in much better shape from Julie Silber's inventory.

Hard to say if the feathers are going north/south or on the diagonal here.

Another take is putting the curling feathers in the corners as in this

example by Christinia Hathaway

from the Connecticut Project.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=47-7B-554

Found in Connecticut but made in Ohio

Sunflowers and a Caesar's Crown for the center.

Moving the curving feather to the corners tends to compress the design.

 It fits into a smaller space.

This one is a nine-block.

A relative also from the Connecticut project.

  Feathers on the diagonal need a new number. write 19.36 in your copy of Encyclopedia of Applique.

Seen at Quilt Market in Chicago I believe

Here's the latest of the vintage examples.

Pastel prints with red blanket stitch,

strangely appealing.

No curve in this one

Louise Lynn from the Carlson Four Block Collection at the

 International Quilt Study Center & Museum

#2012_008_0005 

Also IQSC

This is a different pattern though. We are digressing.

If you'd like a pattern for the tulip cross crib quilt the 

Woodard & Greenstein book has one.

 Betty Jefferis won a prize for her machine appliqued

reproduction quilted by Mattie Troyer.

And here's another pattern option from the cover of Quilters Newsletter.

Print it 8" and double it for a 20" block.

Lancaster County's Unusual Samplers

Fanny Shenk Bucher Snyder's diamond sampler quilt

This pink extravaganza has the inked initials H.W. and the date 1860 on the front and on the back F.S.B in embroidery. 

Inked block near the center

The quilt is often shown with the initials going sideways but

the above photo may be the way it was intended to be viewed.

The quilt has been published several times. Patricia T. Herr's 2000 book Quilting Traditions: Pieces from the Past about the quilts of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania features a large photo on the last page. Fanny's given name was Veronica S. Bucher, born October 7, 1841, died December 24, 1910. She was named Veronica for a grandmother. 

There's a date and Fanny's maiden initials on the back indicating it was made before her marriage (eldest daughter Barbara was born in 1862.) But I spent some time considering that date of 1860. Could it be that early? Or was that date commemorative? Or perhaps cut from another older piece of needlework?

A piece of double pink calico with a bolt label from

M.C.D. Borden & Sons,

(American Printing Company in Fall River, Massachusetts)

Why does the date of 1860 make me so suspicious?

First of all it is so pink.

There were plenty of double pink fabrics around in 1860 but it's the pink attitude.

My observation in dating pink quilts....The more pink in the quilt the closer to 1900. It's just not a look you see in 1860.

Second: there are undated similar quilts from the Lancaster County neighborhood that are estimated to have been made at a later date. Trish Herr showed two quilts by Fanny's daughter Barbara Bucher Snyder Stoner (1862-1922)

Barbara Snyder Stoner's Sampler

Estimated date circa 1880

Also very pink.

And then there is this pink twin to Fanny's diamond sampler by an

unknown maker.

Barbara's square block sampler also has a twin

Sampler stenciled "Salinda W. Rupp", 88" square

Salinda Hoffman Rupp (1844-1920) was also from Lancaster County, buried in the Muddy Creek Cemetery in Denver, Pennsylvania with husband Franklin Rupp. Her sashing strips are a brown print that looks to have always been brown. 

It was first published in Robert Bishop & Patricia Coblentz's 1975 book New Discoveries in American Quilts. Dealers America Hurrah supplied the photo. The date was estimated to be about 1870 and detail pictures of the blocks show Prussian blues and madder prints that are consistent with that date.

As you can imagine these samplers of small intricate blocks would have taken a long time to finish. I'm still a little confused about that 1860 date, but I can't come up with any real evidence to argue against it. 

It is fun, however,  to look at these unusual and very busy samplers. Here are some less ambitious relatives---all look to date from the last quarter of the 19th century.

From Stella Rubin's Inventory

Collection of the Speed Museum in Kentucky

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The perfect use for leftover blocks.

Ann Parsons Holte shows you how to cut that odd-angled Lancaster County diamond in her book Making the Lancaster Diamond Sampler: A 19th Century Quilt Design by Fanny's Friend.

Sue Narratives

Put a human being in a quilt block and you get a story.

Although what the story is I cannot always say.

Perhaps I read too much into it....

Seeing this one about a series of bad dates.

Sack over the head if we are going to eat dinner down town.

Some other kind of date.

Smoking what?

Somebody asked where I find these. Mostly EBay.

Here's a post from a few years ago.

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/09/sunbonnet-sues-anatomy-lessons.html

Hannah Nicholson Grave Quilts

I've been looking for quilts with a bouquet of chintz focusing on a white dahlia and found two albums that are quite a bit alike.

They share the print and many other characteristics.

I love to find twin quilts because they often offer clues to a regional style, an influential teacher or a prolific quiltmaker. There is little mystery to solve, however, with Hannah's albums. Both are attributed to friends of Hannah Nicholson Grave.

The quilt with the lighter striped sashing is in the collection of

the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

96" x 100". Gift of Mr & Mrs. Robert W. Dobbins, 1991.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/86527.html?mulR=1925756747|36

The quilt with the darker sashing is in the collection of the 

Smithsonian. #1986.0657.01, 99" x 98", 1843.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Grave in 1986

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556204

The same hand seems to have set the blocks with stripes and red stars.

From the Smithsonian caption:

"Hannah C. Nicholson was born in Indiana on November 19, 1824, to John and Esther Nicholson. On August 14, 1845 Hannah married Howell Grave (1818-1894) in Wayne County, Indiana. 

"Members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, presented Hannah C. Nicholson with this album quilt made in 1843. She was 19 years old at the time and would shortly marry Howell Grave....The forty-one appliquéd blocks and one inked block on this quilt are inscribed with names, dates, and places. Most of the places inked on the blocks are from the Philadelphia area, with a few from New Jersey (Woodbury, Bordentown, Pleasant Hill, and Salem). Although Hannah was born and lived in Indiana, her father was from New Jersey. 

Quaker Meeting House in New Garden, later Newport and

later Fountain City, Indiana 

"Howell and Hannah farmed in Wayne County and raised four children, three girls (Esther, Emma, and Josephine) and a son (Vernon).

The Graves's land northeast of town

In the early 1860s they moved to Richmond, Indiana, where for twenty years Howell was one of the principal iron merchants in the city. By the mid-1880s he was in the insurance and real estate businesses. Two of their daughters are listed as teachers on the 1870 census, while Vernon continued to farm. After Hannah was widowed in 1894, she lived with her daughter and son-in-law in Wayne, Indiana. She died there on February 13, 1912, and is buried in the Earlham Cemetery Richmond, Indiana."

The Coffin house is a museum dedicated to the antislavery Quakers.

Howell Grave’s parents and grandparents arrived in Indiana in 1816 and he was born there in 1818, the year of statehood. The Nicholsons and the Graves were probably part of the strong anti-slavery community in the New Garden area where Levi and Catherine White Coffin were leaders. Several years ago I designed a star block for New Garden Quakers. See a post here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/03/threads-of-memory-3-new-garden-star-for.html

The blocks in the twin album quilts were made for Hannah before her marriage. She may have set them together. I also found another quilt attributed to her hands.

Oak Leaf Quilt by Hannah Nicholson Grave, 

estimated date 1843. Collection of Conner Prairie Museum #91.5, gift of

her great-granddaughter, 1991.

http://ulib.iupuidigital.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/CPQuilts/id/204/rec/57

Do click on the details on the side column.

How many others of Hannah's quilts descended in her family?

See a post on the chintz with the white dahlia here:
https://womensworkquilts.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-boyle-sisters-professional.html

Did someone buy a block readymade for the album?