Eagle in Mysterious Blue Dots

Eagle with reverse applique

and rather unusual talons.

This eagle of polka-dotted, navy blue print is in the corners of a four-block Princess Feather quilt in the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, from the Linda Giesler Carlson and Dr. John V. Carlson collection.

Last month at the Covered in Blue event at IQSC we got a closeup look.

Right away the blue print bothered the group examining it.

We'd seen a LOT of 19th-century indigo blue prints with dots over the weekend.

But this print was different.

Too purple for one thing. Too many dots per square inch.

It's hard to put a visual reaction into words.

The print just did not match the pattern and set which were so elegantly

19th century.

The print looked 1940s....

1938 Sears catalog

The eagle with his odd appendages and reverse applique---so 19th-century.

Perhaps a mid-20th century copy of a 19th-century quilt?

But then Barb Garrett wondered if it was not a 20th-century repair to a a 19th-century quilt. Some industrious stitcher had covered every patch of an antique quilt with new (sort of) similar fabric. Even doing the reverse applique.

What was underneath the blue polka dot?

It will remain a mystery.

https://www.quiltstudy.org/quilt/20040160027

IQSCM has another four-block quilt with the eagle in the border, this one

date-inscribed 1849, made by Lydia Ann Herman from the Dillow collection.

https://www.quiltstudy.org/quilt/20080400128

See more about this gawky eagle at a post a few years ago.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-gawky-eagle-and-coxcomb.html