John Hewson

I've been studying the prints of John Hewson, a Philadelphia wood block printer who was in business from 1774 to about 1820. He's sometimes credited as America's "first calico printer," but there's no way to know who was America's first calico printer. Several people left records earlier than Hewson, though.

The bird is from a snapshot of a Hewson print I took at an exhibit at the Winterthur Museum a year or two ago.

I made a list of all the quilts and counterpanes featuring Hewson's fabric that you can see online. Here's one from the Winterthur.
http://content.winterthur.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/quilts&CISOPTR=380&CISOBOX=1&REC=2

To see more go to my web site http://www.barbarabrackman.com/---to the subpage "Quilt History."
http://www.barbarabrackman.com/faqs2.aspx
At the bottom you'll see a list of clickable quilts.

I am going to do a luncheon Roundtable Discussion called "America's First Calico Printer" at the American Quilt Study Group seminar in San Jose in October. It's time to start signing up so click here to find out more about the seminar.
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/seminar.asp

M-m-m-m Cake!

Birthday Cake by Wendy Turnbull

Here's a low-calorie cake that we've been making in my sewing group. Above one slice of red velvet by Wendy; a cake quilt for Sarah who makes birthday cakes for us all year round and at the top another version by Bobbi Finley, whipped up from The Morris Garden reproduction collection I did for Moda. The Morris Garden fabric should be in the quilt shops in July; the pattern for the Birthday Cake is available from C&T Publishing or your local quilt shop.

http://www.ctpub.com/birthday-cake-pattern/

Serpentine Stripes 2

Celine sent a photo of her grandmother wearing a dress of serpentine stripes. The fashion for these snakey stripes (hence the name) was revived at the end of the century and here we have a woman at work about 1895 wearing a fashionable but serviceable dress. Celine writes that Ellen Mason Grable is standing to the left of her husband Silas Grable. The other men were his brothers, salmon fisherman and loggers in Ilwaco, Washington.

She also writes: "It's funny how us quilters always notice the fabric!"

Clues in the Calico

For years my first book on dating antique quilts, Clues in the Calico, has been out of print and fetching prices over $100 on the used book market, making me wish I had several hundred copies to sell. I have exactly two copies. But of course if I'd had several hundred copies to sell it wouldn't have been so hard to find and the price would have been less.

But now, you can have a copy for $19.95. C&T Publishing has created a digital version that you can download. It's exactly the same as the 1989 version, but it's a file you can print if you want to or save on your computer. I am buying one to save to a file because then I can do digital searches. If I want to know more about, say medallion quilts, I can search by the word "medallion" and find every mention.

Read more about it by clicking here.
http://www.ctpubblog.com/downloads/quiltmaking/clues-in-the-calico/

Serpentine Stripe

I just watched the BBC production Byron and found this trivia site for people like me who immediately forget the actress's name and the plot but NEVER forget a costume. I was sure I'd seen the dress that evil Augusta Leigh was wearing and---of course---it was Mrs. Bennet's!!! The brown serpentine stripe was equally fetching on seductive sisters or silly mothers. The photo features a reproduction serpentine stripe in brown that Terry Thompson and I did for Moda several years ago. The wiggly stripe is quite similar to the fabric in the dress.

Check out this site for costume connections---Who wore what.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369084/trivia

Which begs the question…
Why doesn't the BBC go out and buy new reproduction fabric and make new costumes? The dresses in the period dramas seem to get around more than the Chico's jackets in my sewing group.

More Medallions

Here' is Pam Crooks' medallion top for her friends' challenge using the Uwa reproduction fabric, the same challenge that inspired Cindy Vermillion Hamilton's quilt. I think the fabric in question is Pam's border here.

Yesterday's post elicited several questions and comments, among them:

Do you have [medallions] in your collection? Can you give us a little history about medallions?

I have two antique medallion quilts but they are not the greatest. I do have a lot of photos of reproduction medallions. I've been collecting snapshots to post in the gallery of my e-Club for C&T, which this year deals with early quilts especially medallions. Check it out at http://www.cluesinthecalico.com/

As far as a history of medallions. Here's an excerpt from Chapter 2 in that club:
"Early quilts often have a central design focus, a setting style Americans tend to call medallion quilt and the British call framed quilt or frame quilt. The terms seem to date only as early as the twentieth-century, possibly established in 1929 by quilt historian Ruth Finley who described a quilt with a tree-of-life center as a "framed medallion" in her book Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them.

Although women working after 1840 were likely to use a block format, earlier quiltmakers preferred the medallion set. On my website I maintain a list of eighteenth-century quilts with the date actually on them. (See it by clicking here: http://www.barbarabrackman.com/faqs2.aspx) Of the 14 quilts in which I could identify a set or style 11 were constructed with a central focus (about 80%). Of quilts date-inscribed in the 1840s I found the opposite; 80% were block-style, a dramatic style shift in the century's first decades."

....And as Homer Simpson would say "Doh!" I didn't realize that if you clicked on the pictures here they get larger! So click on Pam's quilt. Wish I had a better photo.

Paducah Prize Winner

To England and Back, Cindy Vermillion Hamilton, Pagosa Springs, CO

Penny Tucker sent me an email to announce that Cindy Vermillion Hamilton won first prize at the American Quilters Society show in Paducah this week under the category of Handmade Quilts with a medallion quilt she made for a fabric challenge Penny organized last year. The quilts were to be medallions and use a certain amount of a Uwa reproduction print.

Here's a snapshot of Cindy's top being shown at AQSG last October. Her quilt is completely handmade down to the binding. To see a better shot of it quilted go to
http://www.americanquilter.com/shows_contests/paducah/2009/contests/quilt_winners.php
and scroll down about halfway to the category "Handmade Quilts: Hand". Click on "1st". You can click on all the winners on that page.

Congratulations to Cindy.