Kentucky Regional Design & the '33 Fair #1

Sears, Roebuck sponsored a quilt contest at the depths of the Depression promising an enormous $1,200 first prize. Almost 25,000 quiltmakers entered. Merikay Waldvogel and I have spent years looking at the quilts, the contest and the scandal. 

Color added to a 1933 sketch from Capper's Weekly of the top winner. 

Stuffed work quilting & the newly fashionable shade of green 

that came to define the 1930s were undoubtedly assets in the judges' eyes.

Two of the four final judges pose with their choice: Sue Roberts from Sears Publicity Department and Mary McElwain (standing) owner of a custom quilt shop in Wisconsin. 

Margaret Rogers Caden of Lexington, Kentucky won the $1,000 award.

We have no color photo of her "Star of the Bluegrass" as the quilt remains missing 

despite our 40 year search. 

Collection of the International Quilt Museum

https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/19970070550

This is a copy by an unknown maker from a post-fair pattern by Mountain Mist.

Not quite the same green or skill level in the stuffed work quilting.

The stuffed work or trapunto leaf design was an important part of the winning design and its copies.

Mountain Mist sold the patterns as "Star of the Bluegrass."

Reverse of the fernlike spray between the stars

The quilter layered two fabrics and quilted the design's outline;

then added extra cotton batt through small holes to puff out the leaflets.

The scandal is that Margaret Caden whose Lexington quilt shop commissioned the handwork from several contract needleworkers did not share the glory or the cash with the women who actually did the stitching. Read our 1993 book, out of print but easily available used.

And we did an online lecture a few years ago on the topic.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/03/chicagos-1933-quilt-contest-updated.html

Merikay is the keeper of the World's Fair stories. Do see her Legacy file at the Quilt Index which connects you to about 30 entries.

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=specialcolls&kid=33-133-2

And see a post from a few years ago in which I HOPED the winning quilt was up for sale.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-shopping-drama.html

Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilts series most recent entry The World's Fair Quilt retells the story as fiction.

In the next post more about the pattern and it's Kentucky regional links.

Purple Cottons: Chemistry & Quality

 

Faded grapes. Surely, they were once purple.

We've been looking at purple in July in our 6KIA Facebook group

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

Kris Dreissen posted details of a top with different purples fading in different ways.

The seaweed stripe may have been engineered to fade in rainbow shades of brown.

The small ditsy print's spotting to brown was not planned but typical. 

We looked at purple silks and wools. Purple dyes in animal fibers have been well documented in books about coal-tar, synthetic dyes. See Simon Garfield's Mauve.

Purple in the cellulosic fiber cotton, hasn't the same drama or documentation. Here's a review of our discussion about madder purple cottons:

For centuries dyers have known how to obtain a variety of colors depending on the 

metal salt mordants used with madder root...

...from purples on the left to reds and browns.

The problem with purple cotton prints is they faded. 

One mill had a reputation for the best purples: Thomas Hoyle & Sons' Mayfield Printworks in Manchester, England.

Collection of the Manchester School of Art

"Hoyle's Lilac" 

In our Facebook posts British chemist and seamstress Carolyn Gibbs considered the causes, information expanded upon here. See her site where she teaches techniques and history. 

https://www.carolyngibbsquilts.co.uk/

 Hoyle's printworks were in Mayfield.

Mayfield Print Works

Mayfield, once a separate town, is now part of Manchester

The Victoria & Albert Museum has a scrap of a printed plaid Hoyle's Lilac (1810-1815) with  identification stamp in the selvage. Their photo is flipped.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O318603/textile-thomas-hoyle-and/

The Cartwright Quilt from the British Quilters Guild Collection, About 1860.

https://quiltmuseum.org.uk/collections/heritage/cartwright-hexagon-coverlet.html

Variations in purple prints are abundant in British quilts, indicating

how many scraps of lilac from Hoyle's or other mills were leftover from garment making. 

In class-conscious Britain a subdued purple calico was considered the

appropriate garment for those in the lower orders, particularly servants and the poor.

Servant Hannah Cullwick's dress was probably a print in a muted shade of purple. Advice in 1860 for dressing a poor family: "The elder girl would require three frocks...Hoyle's lilac prints are the best."

What made Hoyle's purple prints best? Reporter George Dodd told us of all the steps he observed in obtaining a purple cotton at the Mayfield Printworks.

Dodd glided over several steps telling us merely that the stripe was "soaped" and the floral "cleared." Few details indeed, but it is apparently in these details that Hoyle's obtained their famous fade-resistant best seller. Carolyn was pleased to find a reference to the quality of the soap in William Crookes 1882 book Dyeing and Tissue Printing.

"The soap used must be exceedingly neutral. That used by the celebrated firm of Thomas Hoyle and Co., of Manchester, consisted of the best curd soap remelted with palm-oil, and to this simple expedient their well- known success in the production of madder-purples was mainly due."

Collector Lenna DeMarco posted her quilt from about 1850-1875 with a strange fading pattern. The center field is pieced of typical album blocks in a double pink print. The quilt is quite large for the time---94" x 98". Alternate setting squares are a double purple print, the style we might call Hoyle's Purple even though we do not know which mill printed it. Hard to see the tiny figures but it looks like a typical allover pattern of darker purple lines suggesting a floral.

The unusual fading effect: 

The border applique has consistently faded more than the setting squares of the same print. The first thought: The border was subject to a different amount of light which has an effect on these purples. One often sees a faded border where the sunshine hits the quilt through the window daily. But this border has faded in similar fashion on all four sides. 

Carolyn Gibbs' remarks on seeing Lenna's quilt: "Very Strange." And indeed it is.

Dana Auctions

So what has happened??? It may be that the prints' figures are identical but color is slightly different as shown in this sample book with two close purples as two options.

Or it may be that one fabric is a pirated version of the other made by a different mill. Perhaps the copyright ran out on the original and the design was in the public domain. It seems the American quiltmaker used two dye lots, varied runs of the same print, maybe both from the same mill with subtle differences. Or it may be the yardage was printed on different days and under different supervision.

And using different soap.

British Quilters Guild Collection

Thanks, Carolyn, for the careful reading and analysis.

Iris Wreath: Preview Pattern

Iris Garland by Hannah Haynes Headlee, Topeka, Kansas, about 1935.

Collection of the Kansas Museum of History.

https://www.kansasmemory.gov/item/209280

 We've been looking at purple over at the 6KnowItAlls Facebook group, showing off vintage quilts of silk, wool and cotton and discussing the history of the dye in various fibers. Fast purple cotton was once hard to find and the colors were rather muted.

Ask to join the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/6knowitalls

Detail of the Iris Garland

 After World War I, however, a variety of colorfast purple solids became available.

That rainbow of shades must have been an inspiration to quilters

 working between the wars, among them Kansan Hannah Haynes Headlee,

an associate of the Emporia applique artists, one of whom used Rose Kretsinger's pattern 

to create another purple masterpiece in the Orchid Wreath below.

Orchid Wreath by Ifie Espey Arnold, Emporia, Kansas

Collection of the Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas

I combined Rose's Wreath design and Hannah's Iris in a simpler, smaller floral quilt, the Iris Wreath. The pattern was published  in my book Making History. Quilts & Fabric from 1890-1970.

My version of Rose's wreath with Hannah's blossoms.

Pat Moore showed her Iris Wreath in 2023

Lori Kukuk, who did the long-arm quilting on mine, appliqued her own

and gave it some of her elegant quilting.

Roseanne Smith's Work in Progress

Ilyse Moore used a dark background & tightened up the circle.

As I say, the pattern is in my 2008 book Making History,

still available from C&T Publishing as a digitally produced book for $20.99.

https://ctpub.com/products/making-history-quilts-fabric-from-1890-1970-digital-download

I see that in the Amazon listing for used copies the preview gives you the pattern right there to download. So what the heck. Here it is: Six pages of Iris Wreath.

Print these out on 8-1/2 by 11" sheets.

Hope you are inspired.

Emporians would envy us our batiks.

Hot Spots

Statistically July 17th is the hottest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. 

Wade Hall Collection. Kentucky

After that date the average temperature goes down. But that's still a long way off.

Quilts from a hot spot in Kansas

From Mark French. Is it pieced or printed?

Most of these are from online auctions.