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.