Alamance Applique: A Regional Favorite

Southern quilt dealer Illiana Villazon posted pictures of a quilt top in
an unusual pattern on our 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYourQuilts Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/6knowitalls

Very much like one recorded decades ago by the North Carolina project.

It's attributed to Nancy Stafford Spoon Shoffner (1834-1906) ---also

spelled Schoffner---of southern Alamance County. 

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=21-17-694

See more in the book North Carolina Quilts pages 3 & 25.

This is applique pattern Number 31.99 in my Encyclopedia of Applique.

From an Alamance County auction

When the North Carolina Quilt Project published their book North Carolina Quilts in 1988 they'd documented four quilts in the design, all from adjacent Alamance and Guilford Counties. Since then more examples have been found.

Michelle Owens owns one.

Michelle's looks post-1930 by the green shade.

Kathlyn Sullivan discussed the "Alamance Applique" pattern in Mary Kerr's book Southern Quilts.

Southern Quilts back cover

 Kathy noted most makers had ties to the Brick German Reformed Church

 in the Guilford/Alamance county area.

Most examples are 6 blocks with characteristic strong Southern sashings.

Mary Ellen May Neese (1900-1986), Guilford County

See Diana Bell-Kite's Quilt Speak catalog from the NC Museum of History.

Unknown maker---4 Blocks

Lynn Gorges Collection

Neva showed this one.

Virginian Neva Hart is a fan of the pattern and for

a year or so managed a Facebook page discussing the Alamance

Applique or Alamance Rose as they have been calling it

in North Carolina.

 https://m.facebook.com/groups/713565760679390/
Pictures still up there.

The majority of the quilts come from Alamance County and adjacent Guilford 

as shown in Neva's map here.

Glenda Shepherd Hughes showed this one on Neva's page made by her grandmother Helen Elizabeth Shepherd Hughes of Guilford County in the early 20th century.

An exception: The South Carolina project recorded this album sampler made for J. Adam Rickard in Pomaria, Newberry County, South Carolina. The block below his initials looks like an Alamance Rose far from home. 

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=53-155-2247

The Alamance Piecemakers are stitching a challenge based on the pattern. In December the Artsy Group is showing their 18" interpretations.     https://alamancepiecemakers.org/2024-artsy-challenge/

I'd hoped to give you a pattern for the Alamance Rose but it's not finished after spending days on it. I do not recall an applique with so many different pieces.

 My experience indicates stitchers did not just copy a quilt they liked at the fair. If I am having so much trouble drawing a pattern in Photoshop my guess is there was a paper pattern or pattern block passed around or sold in the area.

When I get this pattern done I'll add it.