Zipper Pouch: Stash Sewing Supplies & Hope & Dreams

I've been Photoshopping---I'm a lot better at that than sewing.

And I made some fabric: Harris President 2024 

I uploaded it to Spoonflower.com where you can order a scrap, a fat quarter or

a yard on cotton.

Arrow points to my print at my Material Culture shop, reproduction 19th century style print.

If you are new to Spoonflower.com....

Create an account there.

Shop.

Search for Harris President 2024.

It's about $12   $20 a yard.

UPDATE: Often on sale. Here are two traditional prints I designed:

Make yourself a simple zipper pouch out of a fat quarter.

I found Amanda at Jedi Craft Girl's pattern for a small pouch

to hold your sewing supplies and hopes for America's future.

Here's Amanda's how-to.

https://www.jedicraftgirl.com/2013/06/my-favorite-zipper-pouch-tutorial.html

If you'd rather print some fabric yourself here is a free jpg. 

Print it out on pretreated cotton (available from ElectricQuilt.) Two 11 x 8" sheets should make a pouch cover. You may notice that Spoonflower is better at making a repeat than I am.  But the price is right on the red print.

Morris Manor Table Runner

 

Several periodicals appealed to fans of the Arts & Crafts movement in the early 20th century. Often illustrated with striking cover art or small vignettes they are a good source for design ideas.

Bookplate by Margaret Steele in The Craftsman

1896

Above a sketch signed Jordan with a tulip and two sunflowers.

Design that would make an Arts & Crafts-style appliqued table runner or wall panel.

A pattern of sorts

I drew it up with prints from my next William Morris reproduction Morris Manor, which the sales force is showing to shops now for later delivery.

For ideas see The Craftsman, the British magazine The Studio and the American Roycrofter.

Bibliography of periodicals:

https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/journals10.htm

From Morris Manor

Jane Austen's Wardrobe: Fashion Footnotes to her Letters

 

The third in a trio of recent publications on historic dress is Jane Austen's Wardrobe with appeal for Austen fans who are fascinated by fashion and fabric---a niche audience. You, like me, might fit in that niche. For us the book is a treat.

Jane Austen's Wardrobe by Hilary Davidson was published last fall by Yale University Press.

I've read Austen's letters over and over. Editor Dierdre Le Faye of the British Museum included many footnotes to explain the context but she was not a textile historian like Hilary Davidson. Here we have an addendum of fashion footnotes to the letters.

Now I know what a pelisse, a redingote and a round gown are (the last being a dress not split in the center to reveal a petticoat.)

This silk pelisse in the collection of the Hampshire Cultural Trust

is said to have been in Austen's wardrobe. 

A pelisse is a "woman's coat dress" according to the glossary.

A redingote is a "double-breasted great coat, with a prominent collar."

Davidson tells us, "Please open these pages as you would pull open drawers, and I hope you enjoy peering into the wardrobe...."

Pink shoes

Morris Manor with Attic Windows

 

Attic Windows

Morris Manor my next William Morris reproduction line from Moda recalls

Kelmscott Manor, the family house along the Thames River.

Attic Windows...

From BlockBase+

It's upside down if you are standing on the ground

looking up at the attic windows!

A late-19th-c version from Woodard & Greenstein

Better

The sales reps are showing this collectionn to shops right now for

March, '25 delivery.

The 6" finished block makes the most

of Jellyroll strips and Charm Packs (2-1/2" and 5")

6" squares = 30" x 30" field of patchwork

with a 6" finished splashy border.

Real Clothes, Real Lives

 

Five Wrappers, c. 1895, made from the everyday fabrics we see in quilts at the time.

Been reading another fairly recently published textile history book: Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore by Kiki Smith with an introduction by Vanessa Friedman. 

Catherine (Kiki) Smith is the curator of

Smith College Historic Clothing Collection.

Fellow Know-It-All Lynne Zacek Bassett worked on Smith's team for several years constructing and dressing mannequins, assisting with historic costume information and repairing clothing. She's been dressing mannequins to ship to the New York Historical Society where an exhibit will open at the end of September.

Work aprons

 The collection has over 4,000 pieces, acquired in the past few years. Unlike many other clothing collections Smith College's does not focus on designer wardrobes or celebrity-associated articles. Most of the objects seem to be undocumented, the more inexpensive kinds of wear that many of us interested in patchwork quilts might also collect.

Sundress (ca. 1950) of a print inspired by the musical South Pacific

That this collection focus is valuable and worth supporting would seem to be obvious, but five years ago Vanessa Friedman who wrote the introduction published a story in the New York Times asking 

whether such a collection has any value.

 "As the fate of the collection becomes a subject of debate within the college, it has stirred up uncomfortable questions about what constitutes 'value' in the context of clothes, the liberal arts and the current conversation about how we talk about women’s history."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/fashion/smith-college-clothing-collection.html

The question seems snobbish and outdated but apparently we still need to address collecting women's history at the basic level.

Repair on a work dress ca. 1920

You'll enjoy the book and learn a lot about clothing and fabrics. E.g. Repairing nylon stockings. Eek!

Preview here:

https://insight.randomhouse.com/widget/v4/?width=600&height=800&isbn=9780847873135

Virginia Spread With a Dubious Attribution

 

Smithsonian Collection

 85" x 100"

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_556586

The National Museum of American History owns a large quilt top (a bound summer spread) with the donor attribution that it was made about 1840 by an enslaved woman named Ann at the Womack plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. Slave-stitched quilts rarely survive with the maker's name associated so the initial reaction might be that this could be an important piece, adding to our knowledge of how enslaved seamstresses used the patchwork format.

Ann lived in Pittsylvania County down by the North Carolina state line. The county seat is Danville.

Ann is mentioned along with many other enslaved people in William Womack's 1849 will, in which  he bequeathed human property. William's wife Martha inherited Ann, perhaps Martha was the "Aunt Patsy" married to "Uncle Billy" mentioned by the donor. Patsy was a common nickname for Martha at the time. A Martha J. Thompson married a William Womack in Pittsylvania County in 1825.

However, as we learn more about dating quilts by fabric, dyes, and style, it becomes apparent that the family was mistaken about the date of the quilt and thus its status as a slave-made quilt. The appliqued bedcover was NOT sewn by an enslaved woman as it looks to be from about 1880-1920, many decades after Emancipation. Ann may have indeed stitched it but after years of freedom in a completely different context.

The caption notes that the blocks may have been made in the 1840s but the setting was probably later.

But the blocks and the set date to the same time period---about 1880-1920.

It's bound with a chrome orange solid, also in the cornerstone set.

 This older mineral dye was one of the most reliable of the era.

One reliable clue to dating is this teal blue-green solid, a fugitive synthetic dye that soon turned to a dun or khaki color in some dye lots. The dye was called Brilliant Green. The quiltmaker had enough colorfast blue-green for leaves and stems in the applique but those two corner strips at the top must have been her only leftovers from the applique. The rest of the sashing has faded dramatically ---as solids from the 1880-1930 period often did.

Dye manufacturers Kneck, Rawon & Lowenthal published a dye manual with an accompanying volume featuring tipped-in samples of cotton and wool glued into the book. Here are 3 views of sample # 30 Brilliant green scanned from 3 different copies of the book, some getting more light than others. The dye was so fugitive it faded even in bound books.  There were other versions of the synthetic dye called Brilliant green but I bet this is the culprit in teal blue-green fading to tan.

The applique artist seems to have had two reds as she alternated them in the tulip-like blooms in all the blocks.

The lighter red tulips may have always been a shade of pink, brighter

at one time. Solids were so disappointing in the early synthetic colors.

But the pinks might have been the unreliable solid red that looked like the Turkey red vegetable dye on the bolt but also quickly faded, perhaps synthetic dye Congo red, also a good clue to a post-1880 date

Revealing example of how Congo red fades. Set of blocks exposed to light. Top block = most light. But even the bottom block has faded showing how the light penetrates the thin fabrics. This may explain why looking at the seams of faded reds tells us nothing about the original color. Turkey red in the diamonds; Congo red in the baskets.

The quilt in question may offer us information on the later quilts of freedwomen, an important research project, but I'm afraid it can tell us nothing about patchwork made by women living in slavery.

More posts on fugitive synthetics and how they offer clues to quilt dating.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/08/stars-in-time-warp-32-faded-synthetic.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/10/faded-greens.html