Friday, June 23, 2023

The Most Popular Patterns

 

Women in Colby, Kansas with a log cabin quilt, about 1900

Quilt fads come and go. The fashion for Log Cabin quilts was one of the big crazes once a national quilt style developed after the Civil War.

What were the largest fads? I thought I'd look at the Quilt Index which has 89,637 quilts posted on the day I checked.

Oregon Project
A.H. stands for Swiss-born Anna Huber (1872-1945) who married Louis Creitz
in California in 1897. Anna learned the fashions in her new country, probably stitching
this quilt while in her teens. 

The largest group of designs is the Crazy Quilt with 3,816 examples or a little above 4% of the quilts pictured there. 

Silk Log Cabin dated 1887 when silk scraps were inexpensive and
Log Cabins were the thing.

Log Cabins were next with about 3,600.

Dated 1932-1933
Grandmother's Flower Garden with about 2,000 examples



My research model here is a little flawed as I didn't look at each photo to see if it fit the definition of say a Grandmother's Flower Garden. I just took their count.

Date-inscribed 1932
Double Wedding Ring about 1900 examples

Louisiana, 1938 Library of Congress

Date-inscribed 1934

Dresden Plate, about 1900 examples



Lone Stars 1,250 examples


Fans 1,050 examples

It's interesting that these are national fashions rather than the regional popular patterns we would have seen before 1870 such as Pennsylvania red & green samplers or Charleston chintz medallions. The  national style was spread through published patterns, household advice columns, syndicated women's features and educational organizations.


4 comments:

  1. I find this to be fascinating. This will make for a very interesting discussion at the next get-together with my little quilting group. As I read the title and waited on the computer to load, I was making a mental list of possible patterns which would be included. I totally missed the mark. My mind went to Ohio Star, Churn Dash, Nine Patch, etc., which would be most popular blocks, not most popular quilts. That would be another topic to research.

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  2. Of these six most popular patterns, I've done five. Team Log Cabin here!!!

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  3. I have to wonder if the results of what's at the Quilt Index really reflect the most popular patterns *made*. I'd suggest that they are the most common quilts *saved*. Quilts that were "too fancy" for use on the bed, "too nice" to use because it won a prize, "too good" to use because it was such a pain in the... behind to make, etc. I'd argue that there are so many more plain log cabins and 4-patches, & 9-patches made, that did not survive hard use and repeated laundering.

    But I totally agree that regional styles started to disappear as printed patterns in national magazines or newspapers came along. IMHO, similar thing has happened with the charity (often church related) cookbooks - they used to be unique regional recipes based on the majority nationality of immigrants that settled in the area. Now often the only distinguishing feature is the cover, it seems the recipes are nearly all the same.

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    1. I forgot one other reason - those plainer patterns like log cabin may have been deemed "not worthy" of being submitted to Quilt Index, as not fancy enough, not interesting enough, not made by a famous person, etc. I mean - if you had Great Great Great Grandma's silk & velvet, heavily embroidered, stored in a trunk, crazy patch and Great Great Great Aunt's cotton, worn, torn 9-patch, which one is more likely to be submitted? Unless you had solid documentation (evidence, not family stories) that Great Aunt's 9-patch had been involved in a historic event, which would you choose to submit?

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