QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Sew, Sue Me!
Thursday, September 25, 2025
Opportunities for Crafts Businesses: Panel Discussion September 29th
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Y0BOyvcRQCC03j_ICsdJgw#/registration
Sunday, September 21, 2025
Unfinished Prints from the Morris Archives
I wish I could tell you this is me painting a croquis of Morris & Company's unfinished fabrics. But I can't paint that well. The hands belong to an unnamed designer at the Sanderson/Morris & Company in England. (A croquis (crow-key) is jargon for an image to be translated into a fabric print.)
I'm impressed by this new line of hand painted furnishing fabrics and wallpapers because not only are they repainting the original designs they are adding to sketches never finished, never translated in the 19th century into Morris & Company products. To do this you have to think like William Morris, John Henry Dearle or May Morris.
Monday, September 15, 2025
When Pigs Fly Award
Also note the virtual venue is rather down-scale. We were going to do a Versailles-like ballroom and then we realized how overdone this look is currently, so we just rented a hall in Queens.
One of our biggest expenses was the light strings of flying pigs.
"Tobin is a teacher, collector, and writer of women’s stories from Denver, Colorado. She reported hearing about the UGRR Quilt Code when she bought a quilt from a woman named Ozella McDaniel Williams at a Charleston, S.C., market in 1994. Williams told Tobin that for generations women in her family had been taught an oral history that stated that quilt patterns — like log cabins, monkey wrenches and wagon wheels — also served as directions that helped slaves plan their escapes. Since she lacked historical data to back up Williams’ claim, Tobin enlisted her friend Raymond Dobard, a quilter and art history professor affiliated with Howard University, to help research and write the book, which is [in 2007] in its sixth printing and has sold over 200,000 copies.”
The successful book has made Tobin quite a bit of money in royalties because people who want to hear such stories are unable to apply any historic method or critical analysis to the “Quilt Code.”
Ms. Tobin lives in Denver and maintains an unpleasant Facebook page with little reliance on a historic method or factfinding in looking at current events, rather consistent with her notions about quilt history. https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.tobin.33/
Lisa Evans, who describes herself as a medieval historian, reminded us in a 2017 Daily Kos post, that the book’s single source, the late Ozella McDaniel Williams (1922-1998) was a “Howard University alumna who had worked as a school administrator and was selling quilts to make a little extra money in her retirement. Other dealers at the antiques mall have confirmed that she was well known for embellishing the story of her quilts to impress the tourists.” Lisa wrote to Tobin concerning the accuracy of her book and received nothing more than a form letter retelling the story of Ozella Williams and the antique mall.
Monday, September 8, 2025
Nancy Page Quilt Column: Ghost Artist!
Florence was a food writer, a dietician and one-time teacher at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. In 1919 she moved to Oakland, California for a Home Economics position, returning to Cleveland four years later as the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Home Economics Editor with a daily homemaking column focused on food. She also was a food editor at rival paper the Cleveland Press. Above she gives us her opinion about quiltmaking, an art she never took up.
Anastasia Kerven, 1913 Yearbook from the Mechanic's Institute
Illustrator Ann Kerven also attended New York's Mechanic's [Pratt] Institute. She and Florence may have met in New York or Cleveland or the newspaper may just have signed Ann to fill in the art that Florence had no interest in.
Ann did a great job. But all these years we've been thinking these graceful appliques were Florence LaGanke Harris designs.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1936
Note the signature at the top right.
It's time to start thinking about Nancy Page as two people----Ann Kerven and Florence LaGanke.I appreciate Louise Tiemann and Merikay Waldvogel (avid newspaper sleuths) for bringing Ann Kervin's work to my attention.
A little more about the elusive Ann....
"I have always said the popularity of the column was due to the illustrations…when you look at a newspaper page…what catches your eye…not all the text, but the picture….then you read the article ….On a page crammed with text….the drawing of Ann Kerven stood out."