1847 A Lost Album Quilt

 

Mary Jane Ewing of Perryville (Maryland?) dated her quilt block 1847.

She may have called the group project an "album quilt" as we find the term in use that year...

Thanks to the forgetful Robert B. Rust who advertised in the Washington Union for a lost "handsome album quilt." We can hope it was returned to Mr. Phillips's store, which seems to have been a tailoring and dry goods shop catering to men's fashions.

Cathy Erickson's Collection

1847 Martha Mendenhall, East Nottingham, Maryland

Lydia Preston, Plum Grove, 1847

Handsome album quilts were indeed the thing in 1847--- a few dated blocks.

"Tripping lightly down the river

Frigid years may flit apace.

Still thy heart will guard the giver

On the scroll of thought, a place.

Lizzie, loved one think of me!"

Rebecca Hendricks, Maryland

Suzanne Francis from a quilt in the Pat Nickols Collection

at the Mingei Museum

National Museum of American History

For Mary Hill from women of the Presbyterian Church,

Maltaville, New York

Philipa (?) and Rachel Bradway

A Modern Nose-Gay

 

Cindy had a question about the pattern in this rather art deco quilt.

That Nile green solid certainly is a good clue to a post 1925 date.

The pattern structure defined by the seams is rather unusual.

And hard to find in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

Or the digitized version BlockBase+

It's in a small category of Four Patches: Unequal Four Patches

Designer Eveline Foland who worked at the Kansas City Star

invented it in 1932. She drew up traditional patterns for the

quilt column but she also designed up-to-date modern ideas

and this is one.

Several examples survive, a peachy version by Olive Weber Spiegel,

recorded by the Quilt Index and the Indiana project.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=39-40-4057

Helen Frances Smith from West Virginia

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=26-22-1685

Experimenting with shading from an online auction

Farm Journal pattern

Nancy Cabot in the Chicago Tribune in 1933 showed it as a four-patch.

And my sources indicated that column also called it Pieced Bouquet.

One block....

But making it a four patch loses the off-center art deco look.

A sketch in EQ8 in my Ebony Suite fabric from Moda.

Isolating the block captures Foland's idea better.

Appliqued 5-Pointed Stars

 

From a Baltimore sampler in Julie Silber's inventory

Over the summer I've been organizing my files on 5-pointed stars. Easy to piece if you have a good pattern; hard to draw a good pattern, sez I.

But applique!!! You just slap them on there!

Some eye candy...

Mostly from online auctions.

In the diagonal sash from the Esplanade Museum and the Arizona project.

Perhaps a soldiers' memorial

WWII with the V's for victory?

International Quilt Museum Collection

Red Cross from WWI?

International Quilt Museum Collection

1918, The New Jersey Project,

probably a Red Cross fundraiser.

Dated 1917

Star & Ring

 

Several years ago this quilt in all-over pattern 

appeared in an online auction.

BlockBase & my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns show a lot of 5-pointed star designs but not this one, which doesn't fit in a block.

So I drew it up in Electric Quilt 8.

Might be best pieced over papers???

Print this out on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.

I found it in a 1941 issue of Women's Day's pamphlet This is Patchwork as Star & Ring:

 I am adding it to my Encyclopedia as a new number 424.9

Star & Ring. Women's Day, 1949 1941.

 

Here's another auction quilt that's not in BlockBase.

I'm not drawing this one up.

At least not today.

1833 Ladies Fair in Boston

Australian ladies' fair late-19th-century

Anna Quincy Waterston, when a young Bostonian, kept a diary for a year or so in the form of a letter to her traveling sister. She recorded an early ladies' fundraising fair in the spring of 1833.

Historic Newton Collection

 Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy Waterston (1812-1899)

With all those Boston "Brahmin" names you know

she was wealthy and from a "good" family.

A later fair

The template for such events was set by the 1830s, a hall decorated with greenery (dangerous---could and did catch fire as it dried out) tables staffed by young women to persuade male visitors to buy. Handmade and commercial gifts and small luxuries for sale. Usually held for winter gift giving holidays.

Anna Quincy commenting on the din, the crowd and the excitement.

Illustration of a small quilt attracting a

small customer. by William Thackeray for his novel

of the 1840s Vanity Fair. 

Being in their early twenties the Quincy sisters were more interested in the young men attending than in any needlework being sold at the tables. Anna does not mention embroidery, needle cases or patchwork.

This 1833 article explains the charitable cause. Thomas Handasyd Perkins made an offer to Boston's Institute for the Blind. If they could raise $50,000 by June 1, 1833 he would deed them his house on Pearl Street for a school building. New England women rallied to raise the required amount by his dealdine through ladies' fairs in Boston, Salem and Hartford. The Perkins School for the Blind was established on Post Office Square, which it outgrew 4 years later. They sold the Pearl Street house and moved to larger headquarters.

Sally Foster Otis (1770-1838) 

Sally Foster Otis was the fair's organizer. Wife of former Senator Harrison Gray Otis, also a recent Boston mayor, Sally Otis is recalled as a leader in Boston's elite set. 

Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876)

Samuel Gridley Howe, innovative educator of the visually impaired, was on the school's fundraising team.

Drama ensued when Howe's home was robbed of some Fair funds.

Fairs about this time are an early form of female commercial enterprise, made acceptable to most arbiters of social decorum by the charitable impulse. Sally Otis's May Fair for the Perkins School was an early example but U.S. fairs several preceeded it.

Above, Annette Shiell in her study of Australia's fairs discussed English origins in 1813.

Beverly Gordon in her comprehensive study of American fairs cites an 1827 fair for orphans of the Greek wars for independence in Baltimore as the earliest U.S. event.

An 1856 Massachusetts Universalist fair with the usual display of handmade goods for sale 

"A large collection of articles will be offered for sale, including bonnets, comforters, quilts, stockings, shirts, children's aprons and dresses, and many other useful articles.

Further Reading:

A Woman's Wit and Whimsy: The 1833 Diary of Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy

Bazaars & Fair Ladies: History of the American Fundraising Fair by Beverly Gordon
Fundraising, Flirtation and Fancywork: Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Australia by Annette Shiell

  See Sally Otis's grave here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/66093918/sally-otis