Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: 2025

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Tariff Updates After Three Months

"Yikes!"

Tariffs on imported items have been in place for over three months. Peter Eavis of the New York Times reported on effects on December 1st, e.g., a woman who bought a coat from the Netherlands for $456 plus shipping (a splurge) had to pay another $250 in customs duties when it arrived.

For decades, no U.S. duties were imposed on items worth $800 or less. The current administration closed that loophole that allowed goods to enter the United States tariff-free. The $800 cut-off, known as the de minimis exemption, meant that Americans could buy fabric, patterns, books, etc. from the rest of the world and pay shipping but no tariffs. International shipping has been hit hard by the new economic policy.

As of August, 2025

The tariff situation affects quilters in many ways. The fine quality quilting cottons sold by U.S. companies are printed primarily in South Korea and Japan where tariffs now affect the importers' price, increasing wholesale prices to shops and retail prices to customers.

Over on the top right here I have been keeping track of quilt fabric

retail prices every Friday in the hopes of seeing trends.

End of November, online price for current Christmas prints

September through November, 2025

Prices increased but then dropped to about $13+ a yard at retail shops online

(fabric fairly new and NOT on sale.)

"Yikes!"

My method may be flawed as I randomly pick a new fabric each week to price but it looks like the
retailers or the wholesalers are eating the costs of those tariffs to benefit consumers. Of course different companies use different quality greige (gray) goods---the base fabric---and some probably pay their designers less so there are other factors in the pricing differences but....

"Yikes"

UPDATE ON THE UPDATES: Friday December 5---hard to find a fabric online that is NOT on sale. Found a dot at $12.40 a yard (see upper right for a box with picture.)

The graph shows a downward trend in the first week in December---

and it's not because the tariffs are lower.

Read more about tariffs and why we don't produce high quality quilting cotton in the U.S. in these posts:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/08/abominable-tariffs1-free-trade.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/08/abominable-tariffs2-civil-war.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/08/abominable-tariffs-3-de-minimus-import.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/08/abominable-tariffs4-domestic-cotton_0520044382.html

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/08/abominable-tariffs-5-printing-technology.html

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Mysterious Visuals in Indigo Whole Cloth Quilts

Both the Winterthur & the International Quilt Museums own quilted whole cloth* bedcovers with large center panels of the same printed indigo resist design of a pineapple/bromeliad/artichoke type of plant. Each was bordered probably at a later time; the Winterthur's with a popular cactus print from the 1830s in yellow; IQM's with a "Flying Geese" pieced border of smaller indigo prints.

Inner borders on both are a small vine and a stripe.

The high-end furnishing fabric company Brunschwhig & Fils working with the Winterthur Museum reproduced the print in the 1990's as "Bromelia Resist" and included the vining edge stripe so we can guess what the striped vine might have looked like.

Brunschwhig & Fils repro---3 colorways

The DAR Museum has an indigo resist, whole cloth bedcover in a pheasant print with the same edge design. (All these whole cloth bedcovers seem to be "18th century.")

The Met owns another bird print with the same edge.

Historic Deerfield has a small fragment in the

pheasant fabric with a barely visible vining edge. Is it the same edge?

A peacock blue resist curtain from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

The New Jersey project recorded this leafy print with apparently three borders

although the white and yellow florals seem to have been

laid under the blue print rather than being pieced in. Three finished

quilts combined?

Decades ago author Florence Pettit showed a similar edge on a different print

in a textile from a New York museum.

Bill Volckening's Collection

And here's what appears to be the same edge on another print in a whole cloth bedcover that Bill

describes as "Applied binding, blue resist whole cloth quilt, c. 1760-1800."

Nine bedcovers of 7 different blue resist prints with the same vining edge.

Visual coincidences mean something, but I do not know what ----YET.

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* "Whole cloth" bedcovers or quilts refers to the use of fabric in a single design as the theme. These fabrics are usually pieced together ---sometimes in two long narrow strips, sometimes in smaller pieces.

The Rhode Island project recorded this quilt in the

same print as the one in the Volckening collection.

Added lines show where three lengths of cloth are visible in the photo.

Does it have an edge? Can't see from the photo.

Saturday, November 22, 2025

"Sew, Sue Me!" Finished

Sew, Sue Me!

At a time when Americans define themselves by their hats, who represents us better than the classic quilted “Sunbonnet” couple, faceless under their oversized headgear? Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Bill, popular quilt patterns for over a century, are portrayed in our quilt Sew, Sue Me! suffering indignities and tragedies in the second Trump administration. Eleven quilters from around the U.S. have stitched a group quilt with that “everywoman” Sue reacting to disaster after disaster.

Denniele has sashed our 16 versions of Sunbonnet Sue in the Epoch of US Presidential Administration #47. And Becky Collis has quilted it. Here's a key to each block:

Me celebrating completion at my friend Rosa the dog's house the other night.

Atop the first Sue quilt---blocks for the next one "Pieceful Protest."

10" finished blocks are due on December 1st.

We are going to need a spare quilt while one is away on exhibit.

And outrageous stuff keeps happening!

16 Blocks photographed before quilting:

Alligator Alcatraz by Denniele Bohannon

Veritas!

By Lynne Bassett

Liar! Liar! Pants On Fire

By Barbara Brackman

Quoting the Woman Hater

By Debby Cooney

MAGA Murder Bill

By Janet Perkins

Liberty Handicapped

By Karla Menaugh

Label with an Ankle Monitor

By Barbara Brackman

Flatlined by Measles

By Linda Frost

Seminole Sue Protest at Alligator Alcatraz

By Virginia Vis

Sandwich Guy Sue

By Barbara Brackman

No Kings

By Mary Madden

Guadalupe Flooding

By Barbara Brackman

No Polio Vaccines

By Linda Frost

Commander in Cheat

By Jan & Bob Nitcher

DOGE Tread on Me

By Virginia Vis

Medicaid Recipients Picking Fruit

By Barbara Brackman

The “Sunbonnet Babies” go by many names throughout the country. Bill is also called Overall Sam or Sunny Jim. In the South the pair is known as Dutch Dolls. We’re not using that name; they’re afraid of being deported.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/09/sew-sue-me.html

See a previous post on the project and do read the comments. A couple are from Wackos. Therein lies our problem.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Prolific Pattern Publications

My BlockBase+ digital program from ElectricQuilt

will draw over 4,200 pieced patterns for you, any size.

But it has other features of use to the quilt pattern fan.

Statistics!

Search by Source: Aunt Martha Studios. 133 patterns & names is quite a legacy.

If you want to make a Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks design (mythical designers

known for their intricate blocks) you'll find 383 pieced patterns from

that syndicated newspaper column that began in the early 1930s.

383 is not the greatest number of entries in BlockBase+ and my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. Nancy Cabot, the Chicago Tribune's fictional quilt columnist, gets the honor for the largest number of published patterns. And that is just pieced patterns. BlockBase+ does not index applique.