QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Sunday, August 30, 2020

String Quilts: Regionalism

String Quilt by Mary Dean of Franklin County, North Carolina
North Carolina project & the Quilt Index.

Those of us who look at a lot of quilts would agree that string quilts are Southern style.

Mahulda Jane Smith Gates, Louisiana project.

No information
Even if we have no information on them we see these patterns composed of strips of random widths, lengths and angles as a regional design.
I decided to look at the Quilt Index for string quilt designs and see if I could find any clues to regionalism. One of the first quilts that pops up if you do a search for "string" is this one, surprisingly from Alberta, Canada (hits are presented in alphabetic order --- sort of---by projects. This one: Alberta.)

Alberta is NOT South, but they recorded the provenance of the quilt, a top quilted later by someone who found it in Canada but knew the maker of the top was from Kentucky and had been born in Alabama. Way South of Alberta.

What about string quilts in Connecticut?

Here's one recorded in the Connecticut project.
But is this a string quilt?

Are we going to be fussy about the definition and say a string quilt is pieced of irregularly shaped strips? Yep.  This quilt is a strip quilt; all the strips seem to be the same width.

It was harder to find a string quilt in New York. This is a silk strip quilt.

While I was working on this post Southern quilt collector Teddy Pruett noted on the QuiltHistoryFacebook page that Pennsylvania expert Barb Garrett had noted "There are quite a few in PA but they are made with very regular strips not actually random strings."  

How they do it in southeastern Pennsylvania

Ruth Eubanks, North Carolina Project
How they do it in North Carolina.

Pennsylvania

Dora Webber in Louisiana

Now I am stacking the deck here with quilts that contrast. I have irregular-shaped strips in Massachusetts and regular strips in Tennessee.

But that contrast between regular and irregular strips
is a good regional clue.

And I couldn't find one quilt I'd consider a string quilt in the first 15 pages of New York project quilts.

Unless you count this one from Harriet DeFrate Hotaling 
from Greene County, New York.

Well, I'm calling it a crazy quilt and I doubt there is much regional difference in crazy quilts
from Seattle to Seacaucus to Savannah.



4 comments:

  1. Now days that will not be the norm, since Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville blog, is encouraging quilters all over the world to use up those scraps of strings we have. Present day quilts will be hard to identify where they came from.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My first reaction on seeing the last quilt was that it was metaphor for 2020. But I suppose a lot of crazy quilts could evoke the same.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Does anyone know anything about Mary Dean. Her life, husband, her children. I am a Dean from close to that area and a Puckett. I have found many quilts. Thanks
    Geri

    ReplyDelete
  4. A GREAT SPELL CASTER (DR. EMU) THAT HELP ME BRING BACK MY EX GIRLFRIEND.
    Am so happy to testify about a great spell caster that helped me when all hope was lost for me to unite with my ex-girlfriend that I love so much. I had a girlfriend that love me so much but something terrible happen to our relationship one afternoon when her friend that was always trying to get to me was trying to force me to make love to her just because she was been jealous of her friend that i was dating and on the scene my girlfriend just walk in and she thought we had something special doing together, i tried to explain things to her that her friend always do this whenever she is not with me and i always refuse her but i never told her because i did not want the both of them to be enemies to each other but she never believed me. She broke up with me and I tried times without numbers to make her believe me but she never believed me until one day i heard about the DR. EMU and I emailed him and he replied to me so kindly and helped me get back my lovely relationship that was already gone for two months.
    Email him at: Emutemple@gmail.com  
    Call or Whats-app him: +2347012841542

    ReplyDelete