Battle Hymn Flag Print

I called this flag print "Shiloh" after an 1862 Tennessee battle.

According to the National Park Service site:

"No soldier who took part in the two day’s engagement  at Shiloh ever spoiled for a fight again.”

The document print came from a very ragged comforter, a charm quilt made of hexagons. I had one piece of this patriotic print very much like the Sharpsburg Tan on the left. The only other piece worth saving in the comforter was a U.S. Grant presidential campaign fabric from the late 1860s or 1870s somewhat like this:

So I have dated the flag print as 1870s, like most of the prints in the tied comforter.

A few weeks ago I spent a few days sewing with my friend Bobbi who is making the Checkered Past pattern from a pack of fat eighths of 1862 Battle Hymn.

See the pattern with a photo of Bobbi's ancestor Hancy by clicking here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/01/checkered-past-free-pattern.html

I bet she has the top done by now.

The quilt is similar to the Lincoln Museum Quilt that Deb Rowden and I did for the museum in Springfield, Illinois a few years ago.

We used plaids and stripes---sort of like this. It's a digital sketch.

 See more here:

https://www.pickledishstore.com/productDetail.php?PID=945  

More on Broderie Perse

Quilters are often surprised when they see Broderie Perse applique quilts up close. You can see that the blue-gray leaves are not cut close to the outline, but cut rather loosely into the white background.

Once you see that the cutting isn't quite as close as it looks in a photograph, you realize that the technique is not all that difficult.

Of course, SOME people like M.L.D, above, cut her florals and stems very closely in 1853. This makes it harder to cut, manage and sew.

The peacock's feet and perch are cut

freely from the white background.

The secret to making Broderie Perse relatively simple is to match the background color of both the chintz floral and the background fabric carefully.

That's easy when both backgrounds are white.

But it's not always easy to find matching backgrounds. See the blobby shape on the left which was a tan ground chintz. It just didn't work. If she was going to use a darker background she should have cut carefully around each rose as the quilter below did.

It looks like the backgrounds for her florals were brown so she had to snip close to the flower and do a lot more work.

Here's another antique quilt with leaves and flowers apparently cut from a dark background. The seamstress used a blanket or button-hole stitch to secure the applique, a relatively common technique.

The Sarah Morrell album quilt, which alternates pieced blocks and Broderie Perse blocks

Di Ford has done patterns for a reproduction from this mid-1840 quilt. Two bloggers from the Netherlands are posting their progress. Click on their blogs to see more of the process:

http://dorryvanbeers.blogspot.com/2010/04/morrell-month-1.html

http://www.supergoof.web-log.nl/

And see this Secret Sewing Sisterhood blog:
http://secretsewingsisterhood.blogspot.com/2010/07/daughters-of-sarah-morrell.html

Traditional Broderie Perse is harder today because large-scale florals with white backgrounds are rare.

The lack of white background chintzes may be why the technique fell out of favor after the Civil War, when chintzes gained a "chintzy" reputation. But it is still possible to match backgrounds. Just forget white.

"Ohio Autumn" from my Moda collection Arnold's Attic

When planning to do Broderie Perse, pick out the large-scale floral, then find a color match for the background. Arnold's Attic has close color matches in small-scale prints for the shades in the large leaf print.

Occasionally designers do you a huge favor and give you a large-scale floral with a fancy background pattern PLUS yardage of the same fancy background pattern, as Kaye England did several years ago. Judy Severson made great use of Kaye's two prints---chintz print and matching background in this Broderie Perse quilt below.

See more about Judy's broderie perse quilts at a post I did earlier this year. Click here: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/01/judy-seversons-broderie-perse.html

One of the best ways to do contemporary Broderie Perse is to focus on black. Black-ground chintzes are easy to find today (although they were NEVER a traditional print style because blacks for cotton were not practical until about 1890.)

Roseanne Smith is making a Broderie Perse on black quilt. Here's a block with flowers cut out and arranged on a new background. She's ready to needleturn applique it.

Here's her leftovers. You can see she could cut general shapes because her blacks match so closely.

Here's one of her finished blocks.

This little quilt by Sujata Shah makes the most of matching blacks. That's just a strip of black-ground floral stitched above the vase. See Sujata's blog by clicking here: http://therootconnection.blogspot.com/

Logs and Leaves by Bobbi Finley

Bobby appliqued leaves cut from a dark ground print to her dark log cabin blocks.

If you've been doing Broderie Perse I'd love to see photos---in progress or finished.

Clues in an Old Pattern

Continuing comments on the old star quilt shown in my last post:

This early quilt, which may date from 1820-1860, features interesting patchwork. The pattern is all in the sashing. The blocks are plain white, the perfect spot to show off some fancy quilted wreaths.

It's in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns (#1059) but I didn't find this pattern in any publication until 1973 when Lenice Ingram Bacon showed an antique quilt she'd purchased in Tennessee. She called it Darting Minnows. In her book American Patchwork Quilts she pictured a detail of the same design in plain red and plain white set on the diagonal.

I once owned a similar quilt in a single indigo print and plain white (a hard combination to date.) I'd guess it was first half of the 19th century. Mine had a square inside the cornerstone square. Robert Bishop in one of his books on antique quilts showed another indigo and white version set on the diagonal and called it Eight-Pointed Star---a good generic name. Bishop's version was "late 19th century."

The variations of these "Sash and Block" designs with an unpieced block were a folk pattern handed around from quilter to quilter. Nineteenth-century periodicals and pattern designers didn't publish or name them probably because the construction would be hard to show in the little black and white square diagrams the magazines used to communicate about patterns.

In the turn-of-the-last century magazines and catalogs I did find a similar pattern with shorter star points. About 1900 the Ladies' Art Company catalog sold a pattern for the quilt below named Vestibule. In 1914 the Household Journal published it as Morning Star.

Morning Star by Bobbi Finley,

a reproduction of a top from about 1900-1920

Here's a detail of the original top that Bobbi copied faithfully. I'd guess the maker saw it in the Household Journal as she colored it just as it was shown.


I love this pattern and have made it up in several of my Moda fabric collections. Here's a mock-up of the quilt in the newest line Arnold's Attic, which reproduces fabrics from about 1900, the decades of the top above. Arnold's Attic is scheduled for August delivery. The unpieced squares are cut 4-1/2" so it's a great design for a Charm pack plus.

See a  pattern for a similar 32" square wall hanging on my webpage.

Click here and scroll down to the lower right where there are Free Patterns. 

http://www.barbarabrackman.com/

Tile Quilt Revival

Lotus, Bobbi Finley

Carol Gilham Jones and Bobbi Finley's new book Tile Quilt Revival: Reinventing a Forgotten Form is in the quilt shops now. I wrote an introduction and got to include some photos I took of the tiles of Catalina Island.

Tile Quilts are a cross between applique and crazy quilts in which the backing fabric, the grout shows.

Starry Orange Peel, Bobbi Finley and Carol Gilham Jones

An interpretation of an antique quilt.

Here are two that aren't in the book.

Charles and His Favorite Things by Carol Gilham Jones

This fused portrait of Carol's husband also contains a portrait of Carol and their lovely dogs Grace and Sumo. The late Sophie is also on there.

All in the Family, Bobbi Finley and the Glory Bee, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2008

Bobbi is a cat person

The Road to California quilt event in Ontario, California will have a special exhibit of quilts from the book. Look for their show if you are going to Road to California at the Ontario Convention Center January 14-17. Read more about the exhibits here:

http://www.road2ca.com/exhibits.html

Read more about the book Tile Quilt Revival here

http://www.ctpubblog.com/2009/11/04/sneak-peak-tile-quilt-revival/

See a few antique tile quilts by clicking on these links:

Cowan Auctions sold a terrific example several years ago. It's in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg now.

http://www.cowanauctions.com/past_sales_view_item.asp?ItemId=35547

Woodard & Greenstein show a pair of tile quilt blocks.

http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=367395

Laura Fisher has a wool tile quilt on her website. It's appliqued shapes covered with embroidery.

http://www.laurafisherquilts.com/servlet/q.QDisplayItemDetail?in=10767

And see a tile applique inspired by the book at Brandy B's blog

http://brandybwine.blogspot.com/2009/12/sittin-up-in-my-room.html

Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon. Hand appliqued and hand quilted by Bobbi Finley, San Jose, California, 1998-2001. 72 1/2" square.

On the masthead here you'll see the new cover of my reprinted Encyclopedia of Applique. I published the first edition in 1993 and it's been out of print for years. It was in such demand that used copies were bringing over $100, so C&T Publishing decided we'd republish it. It should be in quilt shops this week.

The new edition has the same index to 2,000 applique designs but with a new cover, more color, an updated history of applique and five projects. Bobbi's Rose of Sharon is one of the how-to projects (scallop and everything).

The striking color on this quilt was inspired by the flowers we call Rose of Sharon in my part of the world. These hardy hibiscus are in bloom right now, cheering up our sun-scorched August gardens. Bobbi says her idea of a Rose of Sharon is not the red and green of traditional applique but purple and yellow like the flowers outside her kitchen window.