Piñata: One of a Kind?

 

Is this mid-20th-century quilt one of a kind?

I found it on Judy Howard's Facebook page where she posted several quilts in 2016. She had a shop Buckboard Quilts out of Oklahoma City ---I think she's retired now. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064662566923

When I posted it on my Facebook page Katie Wilson said it looked like a piñata and it does---in color and in the way the edges look like paper fringe.

It took some trial and error but I figured out a pattern.

Print this sheet out 8-1/2" x 11". Note the inch square for scale.

And also note I did not tell you how many pieces to cut or how

many diamonds to make. My advice. Make them till you are bored.

Make a few more. (That's how Alma used to tell us how many pieces to cut.) 

Call it done.

Mary Woodburn Greeley, Hand Weaver

 

Library of Congress

Mary Woodburn Greeley (1788-1855)

probably taken in the early 1850s, from a scratched 

daguerreotype produced by Mathew Brady's studio

Matthew Brady (1823-1896) had a goal of photographing every famous person in the United States and apparently the mother of the famous newspaperman Horace Greeley qualified for his portfolio.

Horace Greeley (1811-1872) by Brady Studios 

This woman was remembered fondly by son Hod, 

who left a record of her life giving us some insight 

into woman's work in early 19th-century New England.

Horace's birthplace (the one & a half story cottage) in Amherst, 

New Hampshire still stands.

His father Zaccheus Greeley owned this place at a high point in his career as a yeoman farmer. Zaccheus could not make a go of this farm or any of the others he rented as he moved the family west. It's a common tale of early New Englanders fighting rocky soil in hilly terrain, a cold climate and an erratic economy. 

According to her son, Mary the young mother (she eventually had seven children) added to the family income with spinning and weaving work. His autobiography tells us that she manufactured cotton, wool and linen goods at home to sell to local textile enterprises.

New York Public Library Collection

Working much like this hand weaver 100 years later.

Mary was put out of her home work by industrialization. Mechanized textile mills that developed in
Greeley's youth in the teens could produce cloth cheaper and more efficiently with a less-skilled labor force. There was no longer a market for hand production at home.

Unmarried young women with no child care needs

found work in the new mills, here winding bobbins for the machines.

The Greeleys lost the farm and moved to western Vermont when he was about ten. Horace recalled:

“We had been farmers of the poorer class in New Hampshire; we took rank with the day-laborers in Vermont.” 

The account of Mary's textile work in the teens is a small glimpse of pre-industrial New England and women's work.

In an 1810 report to Congress Albert Gallatin estimated, "Every second [New Hampshire] house, at least has a loom for weaving linen, cotton, and coarse wool cloths, which is almost wholly done by women." Elizabeth Hitz also calculates half of New Hampshire's families had a loom in the home, based on the 1810 census. (In Maryland one family in twelve had a loom according to her book A Technical and Business Revolution: American Woolens to 1832.) We often assume the spinning and weaving went to clothe families but many of those women, like Mary Greeley were professional textile producers.

We know much more about the difficult transition from home production to industry in England where many of the skilled home workers seem to have been male, perhaps an important difference in handling that transition. 

The legendary and imaginary leader of the Luddites

 Ned Ludd dressed as a woman

In England weavers conducted violent protests after being put out of work by mechanized looms. We hear of the Luddites who wrecked machinery in raids beginning the year of Horace's birth in 1811. "Machine breaking" was made a capital crime and protesters were hung. Legend has it the male raiders often dressed like women. In the United States where women appear to have been the home weavers there was no Luddite protest. Families like the Greeleys who lost an important part of their income followed Horace's later advice to "Go West."

Horace's New Hampshire memories also include references to a social event his mother attended. Rather than bringing their plain or fancy sewing the "matrons" brought spinning wheels small enough to carry under their arms.

Quilt Style: Wool Pre-Cuts

 

Utilitarian bedcovers pieced of wool rectangles are one

of the very common styles we come across. They are not

glamorous or valuable but they are warm.

Relations to the far more popular crazy quilt, these show a 

minimalism in color and repeat that has modern appeal.

1912

Many were made from wool rectangles and squares pulled off pages of sales samples.

They tend to be priced at about $50.

Although you can pay more if you want to.

We've been looking at terms for utilitarian bedcovers over at the QuiltHistorySouth page discussing regional names like sougans and camp quilts in the west, haps in Pennsylvania, britches quilts and the Australian wagga. Those names could be applied to any heavy, plain bedcover, pieced or tied, of any patchwork pattern. The names tend to be early 20th century---When were the quilts made?

I have quite a few dated examples. The earliest found so far is inscribed in embroidery 1895. That kind of surprised me as I expected they appeared in the '80s.

1895

You might not be inclined to describe this as a utilitarian

bedcover either.

1895

It looks like someone's long term embroidery project,

related to the fancy crazy quilts of the era, but not crazy

of random shaped pieced.

There seems to have been a fashion for fancy work

on wool in the mid '90s.

This 1896 example has a cut fringed border/edge.

1897 from Donna Vitale's inventory of Pennsylvania quilts.

This one, squares rather than rectangles, looks to be embroidered with wool yarn

 & note the wool stars in the corners

Another red edge on the 1899 example

Then you start recognizing the florals.

A class? A teacher? A published pattern?

Undated example from Donna Vitale's inventory

Note red ruffle

1904 by C.D.K. in Virginia we can assume

1909, appliqued and embroidered

1910 from the Lebanon County, Pennsylvania project

1911

From the Texas project & the Quilt Index

1915, Nowata, Oklahoma Historical Society

I've many photos of similar embroidered quilts without dates. Looking at these

dated pieces we can guess the fashion was about 1895 to 1915.

But here's a description of rectangular wool patchwork from 1884. Ella of Illinois intended to assemble worsted (wool) rectangles the size of an envelope from penpals she met through the veteran's newspaper The National Tribune. She would embroider their names on the patches.

1904

Something similar 20 years later.

1904

The idea of a name quilt, perhaps a fundraiser or just a record of a community, was quite popular after 1880. These quilts combine several ideas.

1910, Kalona, Iowa

1915

1915

The patchwork designs had names like Brickwork or Brickwall. Ruth Finley in 1929 called it Hit & Miss but she is referring more to the shading than the rectangle format.

This Oklahoma example dated 1918 was probably a fundraiser

for the Red Cross during World War I.

1924 Pope County, Minnesota Museum

1925

1898

I've found several examples with less embroidery

Sometimes just an identification and a date as in this Alabama example.

1912 with a little embroidered flourish in the corners

Another from 1912

1913. From the Ladies' Aid but the rest is mysterious.

West Virginia project & the Quilt Index

1915

Albert Smith is said to have made this while

sick in bed in West Virginia.

1915

Lena H. Moss from Iowa. The washable, light blue cotton strips 

stitched over the edges protect the quilt from from grubby hands.

1916 by Mother

1916

World War I affected fabric availability in the teens and then new styles appeared in the late 1920s. However, a few examples in the 1930s show wool covers remained practical.

1932, crib size

1933

1937

1939 R.M.

And here's the last, finished in 1954

1947-1954 Crib Size for H.H. perhaps

Progress?: Polyester fabrics replaced

wool for utilitarian bedding.

Dupont developed Dacron polyester in 1951.

Going back to the wool bedcovers. We have three styles which

we can make some rough guesses for dates:

• Wool patches with or without embroidery on the seams: 1890-1950
• Heavily embroidered wool patches: 1890-1930
• Wool name quilts: 1900-1930

Jeanne Poore's family quilt---ambiguous dates by

Grandma Enfield in the dedication block.

1897 or 1926.

Looking at these utility bedcovers we see an illustration of a truism about quilts and fabric. As an editor at Comfort magazine wrote about the time these quilts were being made

Patchwork is not the cutting up of whole cloth into bits for the sake of sewing it together again...but the utilizing of goods which is already cut up. 

The fabric industry provides pre-cuts, as we call them today---quiltmakers respond with a style to incorporate those pieces.

1920

Post far afield:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2015/09/man-rays-tapestry-readymade.html