Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Southern Spin #6 Sunflower

 

Southern Spin #6
Sunflower, Becky Brown

The Sunflower with 9 points is from Carrie Hall's book---BlockBase # 3448.



Carrie Hall, Kansas Sunflower block
Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art


Becky Collis, Southern Spin 1-6
Print this out 8-1/2" x 11". See the inch square for scale.

Southern Spin #6 Sunflower by Denniele Bohannon
Quilting by Becky Collis


Dannielle's blocks 1-6.

Becky Brown is combining her Southern Spin blocks with
her Freedom's Friends applique. As they are both hand dyed
fabrics they go together well. She's sketched in a 2" HST border and is thinking about color.
Should be fabulous.

From Stella Rubin's inventory.
Southern colors, particularly that oxblood brown solid---1880-1910.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

AQSG Fundraiser: Repro Print Sale

 

(Altered Solomon Butcher photo/Nebraska)
Classic Problem:

Too Much Fabric
Poor Solution: 
Yard Sale

Better Solution Below


Bring your surplus reproduction fabric to the AQSG Seminar in
San Diego that begins on September 28, 2022.


We'll sell it at our ever popular Reproduction Fabric Sale, which raises
thousands for our Endowment Fund every year.

You are probably aware of how hard it is to find
reproduction fabrics lately. So the sale is always popular.


Need ideas on what we want?
See a post from a few years ago here:

Here's what Dawn tells us: 
"Any size: Fat quarter or larger would be great. That said, Turkey red charm packs I assembled last time sold fast."

Bring it with you to San Diego....

Or ship it to Claire McKarns
(her address is in the AQSG Directory)
They'd like to have the shipped goods by September 25th I'd guess.

Claire
And bring money with you to buy repro prints.


Tuesday, August 23, 2022

1881 Reference to a Japanese Quilt

 

When did the crazy quilt fad begin? We quilt historians dither.
But here is an early reference explaining the whole thing.
Early, 1881

Boston Globe, February 2, 1881

"I am making the loveliest Japanese silk quilt..." Amelia

The columnist compares the "Japanese" quilt to the hexagon rosette,
"hundreds of tiny pieces cut with great exactness, laid smoothly together 'over and over.' "
Old-fashioned silk style combined with the new.

From Laura Fisher's estate

I've found other references to "crazy quilt" or "Japanese quilt" later in the year 1881 but the February description to a Japanese quilt may be the earliest. The terms seem interchangeable.



Dated 1887, Isabella M. Smith, Dayton, Kentucky
West Virginia Project & the Quilt Index

1882
I've been dating these as about 1882 at the earliest but I am going to have to move my estimate back a year. Crazy quilts date to 1881. Didn't find any references to either term in 1880.

Here's a reference to "Crazy work" in a quilt dated 1885




A 1904 "Slumbering Robe"
W. E. Prosser

Isabelle Ossing, West Virginia Project,
but made in Columbus, Ohio

1889 Grandma Wise



Friday, August 19, 2022

Hospital Sketches/New England Quilt Museum

I organized a show of quilts for the New England Quilt Museum, up right now.

 
Nancy Austin Swanwick took some great pictures so you get
a look at the show.




I chose quilts for their variety in color, fabrics, sets and borders.
The BOM patterns did not include an appliqued border but many
couldn't resist drawing their own with some great results.


Nancy missed getting a shot of Becky Brown's, the model quilt. We worked together to design the series. Her border is impressive (Sorry, we haven't drawn a pattern.) This is the top before she hand quilted it.


I put my own version in mainly to show the "official" border
which is just strips of similar light prints, a rather
contemporary look. Nancy's photos under the new gallery lights
are good at picking up the quilting, here by long-armer Lori Kukuk.


I had many samplers to pick from and it was difficult to choose. You can see a few more in the small catalog I published at Blurb Books here:
https://www.blurb.com/books/11210826-hospital-sketches
Links not working. Copy and paste one of the above into your browser.


Click on the preview to see the whole book, which includes pictures of each of the nine blocks you can use for a pattern.


Some of the photos are from the Museum's website:







Every year I design a pieced and appliqued block of the month for my CivilWarQuilts blog. This year's is Freedom's Friends and the samplers are going to be as gorgeous as these.







It's hard to capture the color in some of these. Gladi's is
definitely yellow.






See 3 years worth of stitching at our Facebook page HospitalSketchesBOM.
Ask to join and we'll be glad to let you in.



I'll be giving a lecture there on Saturday, September 10th at 11 AM: "Hospital Sketches: Healthcare Workers During the Civil War."