250th Anniversary Quilt Pattern: Democracy's Empire

 OK. So let's say you are pretty optimistic that we will still have a democracy to celebrate on next July's 250th anniversary of the American democratic experiment. You might want to make a quilt. 

You could go Rah Rah Red, White & Blue. 

Another option: A composition that might have been made 250 years ago.

Here's a plan for a medallion eagle, about 85"square, drawn from late-18th-century American style.

While drawing the pattern based on the earliest patchwork designs I realized we have never acknowledged a great invention in patchwork quiltmaking:

THE SPACER STRIP BORDER

1820s: Nicely balanced and relatively easy-to-piece 

thanks to spacer strips between the patchwork borders.

I didn't notice this innovation until I tried drawing medallions in the early American style of 1780-1810. We use spacer strips in our medallions to accommodate different size blocks and strips of blocks. The early quilts we're copying here layered patchwork strip onto patchwork strip with no plain strips between. This makes for discrepancies in strip length and a lot of easing with perhaps a little frustration.

Rachel Mackey's early quilt in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

Here's a design in that early style:

DEMOCRACY'S EMPIRE

Central Square: 15" Cut a background 15-1/2" square and embroider or applique.

A Star Border 5" Stars (16) The long strip finishes to 25".

B Small Squares Border 8" (16 Square-in-a-Square Blocks) Long strip finishes to 40".

C Large Squares Border 13.75" (16 Square in a Square Blocks) Strip is 68.75"

D Plain Border. Side Strips = 8" x 68.75" Cut 2 strips 8-1/2" x 70" (trim to fit.)
    Top & Bottom Strips - 8" x 84.7" Cut 2 strips 8-1/2" x 86" (trim to fit.)

An Alternative

Mount Vernon Collection

Quilt attributed to Martha Washington (d.1802)

Spacer strips between the pieced borders make the geometry work better.

I drew a pattern for Martha's quilt years ago. See it at this link:

https://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2011/10/martha-washingtons-penns-treaty-quilt.html

No spacer strips in the anniversary design. You'll have to ease the seams so things fit.

The Center Eagle

The Bald Eagle became the American symbol in 1782 about the time this quilt style began.

The appliqued bird here was inspired by a pattern in

Woman's Day Book Of American Needlework.

If you want an authentic 18th-century quilt you should embroider the eagle. You might use the pattern in Rose Wilder Lane's 1963 set Woman's Day Book Of American Needlework. It sold well so there are many used copies but you want the accompanying box of patterns, not so available today.

Tennessee State Museum Collection

Lane seems to have based her design on Rebeccah Foster's applique quilt dated 1808.

Very much like one in the Henry Ford Museum attributed to

Esther Bradford and dated a year earlier 1807.

Found on line from Lane's pattern in the 1960s or later.

COLOR

In the first decades of Independence American women had access to an increased variety of imported fabric after British limits. One fashionable print for gowns was "Pompadour." a dark, reddish brown.

John Fanning Watson remembered the popular dark-colored florals of his youth

 that wound up in the earliest American patchwork.

Two reproductions in shops now

Dark plum or chocolate brown combined with a 

 light floral and sometimes an indigo blue accent:

Newbie Richardson found this medallion on loan to the DAR Museum

The Albany Institute, inscribed 1801

Mary Jones

Art Institute of Chicago

Pinkish tones with an occasional red and white toile scrap

 Style didn't include yellows, purples or greens---or if those colors were once in there they have faded.

 

International Quilt Museum 

Mary Campbell Ghormley Collection

2007.031.0007

A later quilt in similar style. The maker used brown & white stripes for several borders, probably making her geometric calculations easier. The central feature ---hexagon patchwork--- more likely to
be 19th century that 18th.

The brown and white contrast was still important.

Leftover brown dress scraps still in the rag bag.

Early American Patchwork: Considering a 250th Anniversary Quilt

 

Collection of the Winterthur Museum

Patchwork quilt with embroidery signed Rachel Mackey and dated 1787

Over at the 6KIAs Facebook group we looked at quilts attributed to the first 25 years of American independence from 1775 to 1800. (Join the group at the link at the bottom of the page.)

Embroidered center of the Mackey quilt,

 wool and silk yarns on linen/cotton mixed fabric

Stitchers who are interested in making a quilt to commemorate next year's 250th anniversary of American independence are asking about appropriate patterns. All we can tell them is we don't know much. But a month spent discussing late 18th-c patchwork revealed some clues to style, fabric, techniques and thus date.

The Mackey quilt is a recent (2019) Winterthur acquisition. Here's the long link to the catalog:

http://museumcollection.winterthur.org/single-record.php?resultsperpage=40&view=catalog&srchtype=advanced&hasImage=&ObjObjectName=&CreOrigin=&Earliest=&Latest=&CreCreatorLocal_tab=&materialsearch=&ObjObjectID=&ObjCategory=Textiles&DesMaterial_tab=&DesTechnique_tab=&AccCreditLineLocal=&CreMarkSignature=&recid=2019.0042.003&srchfld=&srchtxt=mackey&id=844f&rownum=1&version=100&src=results-imagelink-only

Rachel Mackey Wherry (1757-1842) would have been 30 years old when the date 1787 was stitched--- stitched to one or more embroidered areas we assume. Casual genealogical research reveals she had married Joseph Wherry 5 years earlier in August 1783 and by the end of 1787 had given birth to 3 children, adding to 3 young children from Joseph's first marriage. The signature "Rachel Mackey" in 1787 on the embroidery when she was actually Rachel Wherry is one more mystery. It would seem that Mrs. Wherry re-used some of her older needlework in a patchwork quilt, a modus operandi that looks to be typical of the 1775-1800 years.

Her embroidered images reflect the influence

of 18th c. traditional wool embroidery on later applique

designs of the 19th century.

Mid-19th c applique in cotton

Initials & dates in Rachel's embroidery perhaps

The September focus on our Show Us Your Quilts page was to post your earliest quilt.

Readers showed many early 19th century pieces (1825-1850) from their collections but the really early bedcovers tend to be in museums as in the 6 date-inscribed pictured above (a representative sample.).

Mary Jones, whose quilt is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, is harder to track than Rachel Mackey Wherry. Mary's quilt was in the inventory of America Hurrah in the 1980s. Cyril Nelson pictured it in his Quilt Engagement Calendar of 1988 (too yellow in the photo above.)

(More accurate color)

In 1994 the the Art Institute's Antiquarian Society bought it for the museum where curators have examined it closely and determined that while the central embroidered piece might be 1795 the presence of roller-printed cottons and other 19th c. fabrics indicate a 19th c. date.

"Mary

Jones

1795"

The Ohio Historical Society owns this quilt attributed to Sally Howard Bailey---

 a field of patchwork with embroidered squares scattered through.

Its number is H18064 but I haven't been able to find it again in their files.

Reworking an earlier piece of needlework into patchwork bedding seems

to have been common in the late 18th & early 19th centuries.

Collection of Old Sturbridge Village

Nancy Newton's birthdate is in the center of this embroidered piece with minimal patchwork borders.

Nancy lived till 1887. She was born a U.S. citizen in the state of  New Hampshire. 

Cyndi at the Busy Thimble saw a program on the Newton quilt a few years ago and posted photos.

Curator Rebecca Beall explained what she saw in the central embroidery.

Nancy took apart a pocket she had embroidered earlier and enlarged it by designing similar motifs to fill out a rectangle about 33 x 44".

Detail with another pocket at top right to show scale.

Details: The Museum did a repro line years ago with

the border floral here: "New England Quilts" for Marcus.

Historic Deerfield Collection

Combination of styles---always hard to live through times of change.

This looks like a compromise to fleeting fashion. 1) Everybody's embroidering----

2) Oops, everybody's piecing stars of toiles.

Let's add new fashion to old.

Cora Ginsburg Catalog

A less inspired solution to the change in style.

Sally Lee Camden's worn bedquilt isn't dated but she embroidered 

her name under the central embroidered square

"Sally Lee Camden Her Bed Quilt"

Quilt owner Rusty found a Sally Lee Camden born in 1777 (or possibly 1785) in Amherst County, Virginia. Her parents were William and Sybell Dent Camden. She married cousin Peter Dent in 1807 and changed her name to Sally Dent, so we can guess that the quilt was made before 1807. Sally died about 1850 in Bedford County, Virginia.  See a post on the quilt from several years ago here: 

https://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/09/domestic-fabrics.html

And more about Sally here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Camden-196

The footed vase often with curved handles is quite typical of the early embroidery.

Style in America's Earliest Patchwork

Looking at early quilts we can define a few design characteristics:

1) High contrast dark and lights in the patchwork
2) Simple patchwork patterns include triangles, squares and basic stars constructed of triangles & squares
3) Medallion format with a central focus
4) Combination of patchwork with embroidered areas (often recycled from older textiles)

The Smithsonian owns this quilt inscribed 1795 & M Campbell

She followed all the rules except did not feature older

pieces of needlework. It looks like her floral elements were stitched at the same time as the patchwork.

Again the footed vase with curved handles is a feature.

The technique may be reverse applique.

1797 Hannah John

Maine project (Maine was Massachusetts in 1797)

Hannah's quilt has much in common with M Campbell's---

the standard design for the time and the substitution of (reverse?) applique

for an older embroidered textile.

The DAR Museum shows a quilt that Newbie Richardson found with a similar center image.

Photo squared up in Photoshop

Before I realized the impact of professional quiltmaking on quilt history I might

have thought one woman made three quilts for three daughters. 

Now I believe this kind of visual relationship is proof of some kind of commercial enterprise.

Teaching Pattern? Fancy Goods Shop Pattern? Professional Quilt Workshop?

Other Central Focus Ideas

A Toile

Mount Vernon Collection

Quilt attributed to Martha Washington with the Penn's Treaty toile in the center

https://emuseum.mountvernon.org/objects/599/penn-treaty-quilt

Any object associated with a famous Colonial like Martha Washington becomes suspect as to its provenance. (Too much wishing to make it more valuable.)

But this particular quilt (100 inches wide) at least looks as if it might have been stitched by the first First Lady before her death in 1802. She certainly followed the style (or perhaps led it.) The toile, printed in red or brown, is dated to 1775-1795 by the Art Institute of Chicago which has a piece on cotton.

More on Martha Washington & quilts:

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/31467/william-penn-s-treaty-with-the-indians-furnishing-fabric

    https://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2011/10/martha-washingtons-penns-treaty-quilt.html

    https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/09/martha-washington-teaches-quilting.html

MESDA Collection

Elizabeth Webster's quilt signed and dated 1796 looks 

rather minimalist besides the other quilts. It follows the style:

darks & lights, simple patchwork and medallion format, but a floral

print for the center has little drama.

Elizabeth lived in Maryland

Style continued beyond the turn of the century---

we might classify the design trend as 1780-1810 or 1820.

A few questions:

Who communicated that style?

A teacher? An influential fashionista? A commercial fancy goods shop?

Where?

How?

Were there fairs, exhibitions or similar displays to show off women's work in 1790s America. Or was it hand-to-hand transmission --- a tea party, classes, a sewing circle?

Despite the mysteries it would seem that we have a model for early American patchwork. If one were looking to celebrate America's 250th anniversary of democracy quilt design following style characteristics shown here would be appropriate.

Early quilt style----a rabbit hole as we say. I'll pop up from time to time with new ideas (not all of them valid.)

More on the style at this post:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/11/dark-ground-chintzes-5-earliest-dates.html

Join our 6knowitalls Facebook group

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

or

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1413180019082731

Rachel Mackey Wherry's grave: 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/52754975/rachel-wherry