1894 ---Continuing Patchwork Trends

I've been sorting my files of quilts dated in the 1890s.

There is no need to look at each year as the trends noted in 1891 continued.

Here are the quilts inscribed 1894.

See this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/03/quilts-dated-1891.html

Album made for Benjamin Mead Wright

Kent, Connecticut

Red and white quilts remained popular. 

A little over 20% of the cotton patchwork quilts that year are red & white (8 of 34).

The Steady Gleaners, Ontario, Canada

With Turkey red

outline embroidery continuing fashionable.

Silk embroidered fancywork---crazy quilts and other patterns---were a big fad.

Bethel Ladies' Aid Society

New Jersey Project & the Quilt Index

Memorial fundraiser by the Women's Relief Corps, 

Antrim County, Michigan

Michigan Project & the Quilt Index

http://quiltindex.org/beta/view/?type=stories&kid=27-97-70146

And fund-raising signature quilts embroidered...

and inked.

Depauville, New York

Quilters had access to increasingly diverse

patterns as the commercial network developed.

Patterns through the mail must have been quite novel.

Tree of Paradise

From the Ladies Art Company catalog which was

in print in 1894.

One could also find ideas in periodicals.

1890 article in Wide Awake Magazine

Missouri Puzzle was published in the Vickery & Hill

periodicals, perhaps read in the Oklahoma Territory.

Neck Tie from the Ladies' Art Company

Memory Blocks, Ladies' Art

The Ladies' Art Company catalog became quite important to the look of quilts. Wilene Smith makes the point that more elusive periodicals of the 1890s printed the patterns first and they may have been the source for some of these blocks. The pattern catalog of miniature blocks, however, was widely distributed and in print for decades after 1890 and it was probably the source for many of these designs.

1894 Union City, Tennessee

The pattern is Bear's Paw from the Ladies Art Company

done in the solids one sees in the Southern upcountry.

Was the brown once blue?

All solids, dated 1894, Barry County, Missouri

Did a red white and blue quilt fade?

One difference between the quilts of 1891 and those of 1894

is an increase in printed cottons.

Our sample is small but it looks like a quilter working

in 1894 had access to more cotton prints than she might have three years earlier.

Whether she was buying her fabric in Pennsylvania

Or elsewhere

Anna H. Burmeister, Milwaukee Wisconsin

International Quilt Museum

https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/19970070933

Rutland, Vermont

Floral cretonne as the border.

Solids were the thing to use in applique.

Names: Sarah Krause, Meiley

Wisconsin Project & the Quilt Index

1894 "BM MD"

Minnesota Project & the Quilt Index

Turkey reds and the increasingly unreliable greens

Marie L Rucksdaechel Seward County, Nebraska

Nebraska Project & the Quilt Index

Martha White Corry, Fort Worth Texas

Quilted later

Album samplers with a variety of signed blocks were not

as popular as they had been. This one uses solids and 

cretonnes/chintz-scale florals.

It looks like New York style to me, where they continued this

fashion for quite a while.

It's the hearts & the horse that are so New York.

This one dated '94 is definitely from New York

Made for Joseph Bruno at the North River Hotel.

Another sampler with regional style:

The ELI quilt from the International Quilt Museum

"Presented by your Scholars

Sunnyside Ohio

1894"

The style here in solid colors (fading greens) with a distinctive eagle and an irregular make-do set has been traced to Ohio's Miami River Valley by Sue Cummings.

And one other trend:

Alphabet quilts

It looks like 1896 was a good year to be making quilts, whether

you were finding your patterns in print or from the neighbors

and your fabrics in your scrapbag or through the mail.

Log cabin signature quilt, Maine

Here are the rest of the 34 cotton patchwork quilts dated 1894:

From Merry Silber's collection of blue and white quilts.

DeWitt Church fundraiser from the Michigan Project

Boise City, Utah fundraiser found in Iowa

For the Reverend & Mrs. Simmons

Flora Methodist Church, Flora Indiana

The pattern is known as Children of Israel but not published until the 1930s,

which makes me wonder about the date.

Mary A. Miller Garman

Simple patchwork

Grandmother Hurff

And last "Grany Bear" 

Who seems to have invented this pattern

Is this the repeat?

Or this block?