Sweetheart Quilt

Winnie writes with a pattern identification question:

This top was given to my aunt to be hand quilted.  The top was completed years ago, so I'm told.  She and I have looked through multiple books and on line but just can't find a name for this block.  I would greatly appreciate your help.

Sweetheart Quilt by Capper's Weekly

Friendship Quilt by the Kansas City Star in 1938

 

A Heart for Applique by the Kansas City Star in 1951

I went to my Encyclopedia of Applique, found the one-page category named "Four Hearts"

and there it was. It seems to have been published at least three times:
I asked Winnie if I could post a picture of her Sweetheart Quilt; I'm always so glad to be able to identify a mystery.

Detail of Sweetheart Quilt, 1930-1950

....and see how this design was actually stitched. It seems to be appliqued using a small running stitch in black thread.  The little sketches I indexed for the Encyclopedia made the construction a bit of a mystery too. But in Winnie's example I can see it's a tile quilt. There wasn't much published about tile quilts---at least until recently.

Carol Gilham Jones and Bobbi Finley published a book this year called Tile Quilt Revival: Reinventing a Forgotten Form.

It's a 19th-century technique, rather rare, in which fabric shapes are appliqued to a white background and the background shows through as sort of the grout in a tile wall. The quilt below is from 1860-1890, done mostly in wool and wool combination fabrics like challis appliqued to a white cotton ground.

Tile Quilt 1860-1890



Here's a contemporary version of a tile quilt block from Carol's blog Free to Bee. Click here:
http://carolgilhamjones.blogspot.com/


Tile quilt by Carol and Bobbi

See Bobbi talking about historical tile quilts by clicking here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGFAxPzmYxw

And see these blog posts about tile quilts
http://www.weewonderfuls.com/2010/07/im-reading-about-tile-quilts.html
http://lucyquilting.blogspot.com/2010/06/tile-quilt.html

It would be fun to see Winnie's quilt from the 1930s done in new prints.

More Things That Can Go Wrong

Nine Points instead of eight

I can see how seven or six arms can happen, but nine???

(OOPS! Ten, I see by a better counter than I am)

I posted this photo of a top listing dangerously to the left

 a few weeks ago. I think the problem is she kept adding triangles

 as she created strips, "increasing" as in knitting.

Not a good idea.

I have been collecting photos of Out-of-Control quilts for years and now I am posting them in the left hand column. Scroll down to see the Out of Control Quilts box. I'll change them when I remember---about once a week.

This late 19th-century quilt is from Merikay's collection.

It appeared in the article I did years ago.

A reader suggested I call these Quilt Wrecks

(See the famous Cake Wrecks blog here: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/)

But Wreck implies a disaster. Often these quilt wrecks are happy accidents.

I've always felt I had little control over how things were going to turn out. I usually have a plan, but as novelists sometimes say about their characters, the quilt takes over--- it's out of it's creator's control.

I can relate.

Polka Dot Problem

Some people may think I have a Polka Dot problem---an obsession with circles offset in a diagonal repeat.

I do collect polka dot china.

And my dog is named Dot.

And I have a hard time resisting polka-dot items of household decor like the dogbed above. Dot looks very good on it.

And I do have a few too many polka-dot wardrobe items.

Myrna Loy looks better in that little thing than I would.

So I've been analyzing my problem and thanks to the internet I've come up with the source.

As they told us when we were young, comic books would ruin our lives.

My favorite comic was Little Dot

Dot had a dot fixation herself. Each story featured her attempts to dot-i-cize her world. She lived in Dot-Land. Her full name was Dot Polka. It seems I read these in the late 1950s.

Another influence was Polka Dottie with her friend Rootie Kazootie and the dog Gala Poochie Pup. They were book characters. Polka Dottie and Poochie had a rather surreal relationship with the dots which could be stolen, juggled or bounced.

So with such pervasive cultural influences one can see why I have, like Little Dot, a "strange obsession."

High fashion or low

 I come back from my travels with pictures like the one below.

Hotel Lobby in San Jose

If you are crazy about dots you might want to check out these Moda Basic collections.

http://www.unitednotions.com/un_main.nsf/mf_basics

Go to the Moda Basics page

Click on the PDFs to see

Dottie

Essential Dots

and Marble Dots

Stock up now.

Tapestry

Summer, detail from The Orchards; The Seasons

I named my reproduction collection that will be in quilt shops soon

 A Morris Tapestry.

Prints from A Morris Tapestry in the Damask Black colorway

My inspiration was William Morris's revival of woven tapestry technique in 19th-century England. Morris (1834–1896) looked for a return to handcraft during the industrial age. He viewed printed fabrics as mass-produced alternatives to hand-produced patterning. Impressed by the rediscovery of the wool, silk and gold tapestries of the Middle Ages, Morris and his fellow craftsmen staged a revival of the art of woven pictorials at his Merton Abbey workshop.

The Orchards; The Seasons, about 1890

Designed by William Morris and John Henry Dearle

Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Click here to see more:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O72515/tapestry-the-orchard-the-seasons/

Morris's inspiration were the huge pictorial hangings commissioned by European nobility. Above is a 15th century tapesty, a panel from the Unicorn Tapestries woven in the Netherlands. The Unicorn Is Found at the Fountain was made between 1495–1505, and is 12 feet tall. The series was given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1937.

A panel from another medieval woven tapestry featuring unicorns. The Lady and the Unicorn series is now in the French Museum Musée du Moyen Age. 

Discovery of the decaying Lady and Unicorn tapestries in a neglected French estate in 1841 contributed to the popular appreciation of the old-fashioned art of loom-woven pattern.

Detail of the Woodpecker Tapestry designed by William Morris.

1885

Click here for more information on the Woodpecker Tapestry

at the Textile Blog, which has numerous posts about Morris tapestries.

http://thetextileblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/william-morris-and-woodpecker-tapestry.html

Flora and fauna in Morris tapestries echo the medieval designs. Figures are dressed in medieval robes and stand in formal poses derived from traditional iconography.

Detail of Galahad or Holy Grail tapestry,

 designed by Edward Bourne-Jones and Morris, woven in the 1890s.

This is one of a six-panel series.

When last heard of, this panel belonged to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.

As in the Middle Ages, the late-19th-century Morris tapestries were group projects. Morris collaborated with painter Edward Bourne-Jones, designer John Henry Dearle, architect Phillip Webb and others in the design. Morris enjoyed weaving and spent hours at his loom, but had many weaving assistants.

Producing labor-intensive tapestries eventually convinced Morris that printed fabrics were a necessity. He adapted several of his tapestry designs to cotton prints. The Strawberry Thief was one of his woven fabrics that became a print.

See a Morris chair with Strawberry Thief upholstery in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum by clicking here:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9236/adjustable-back-chair-bird-morris-adjustable-back-chair/

Detail from the Morris firm's Forest Tapestry (1887) also in the collection of the V&A.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89213/tapestry-the-forest/

Read more about it here:

http://www.theearthlyparadise.com/2008/02/william-morris-forest-tapestry.html

Read more about the tapestries from the Morris firm:
http://thetextileblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/later-tapestry-work-of-john-henry.html

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/tapestry-greenery-497756

Separated at Birth

It's always fascinating to come across a pair of quilts that are similar. How is it that two quilts residing in farflung collections today look so much alike?

The four-block applique above has been studied by Connie Nordstrom who has found more about 30 examples of the block. This pair came from the Skinner Auction site. They were auctioned three or four years apart. The combination of block plus border makes one wonder....

A pair of four-block quilts with similar odd blocks

Merikay Waldvogel has found several of these wreath designs in Tennessee. The one on the left is from the Winedale collection at the University of Texas; the one on the right from an on-line auction. She's concluded the pattern was a regional design, handed from Tennessee quilter to quilter. Quilts and pattern were carried west to Texas.

In the 20th century we can guess a commercial kit or a pattern is involved.

 

Garden Poppies, a Bucilla kit

But in the 19th century before commercial patterns were published, the mysterious pairs invite all sorts of questions. The makers must have known each other. Or perhaps one maker made two quilts, or it may have been a regional pattern. Or…

The blogger WillyWonky has posted a virtual paper on just such a pair. It's virtual in that he might have presented it for October's American Quilt Study Group Seminar. Here's what he would have done...
http://willywonkyquilts.blogspot.com/2010/10/separated-at-birth-my-virtual-aqsg.html

Anna Catherine Garnhart's 19th century quilts are so recognizable that 11 have been documented.

On the left one in the Brooklyn Museum; on the right in the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But the Brooklyn Museum has the one at the left attributed to someone else. Here's a virtual paper for someone.

Civil War Reunion

Moda introduced my Civil War Reunion collection to shopowners at Quilt Market last week. The quilts above are projects from the collections (left to right) Quilt for a Cause, Minnick & Simpson and my Civil War Reunion. Here's a preview of my collection that should be in stores in January, 2011.

2011 is the Sesqui-Centennial---the 150th anniversary---of the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. The fabric collection celebrates reconciliation between North and South that began the day the war ended. Prints are named for veterans' groups and the women's associations who shaped the way we remember the War 150 years later.

We'll be doing a 10-part Block of the Month called Northern Rose/Southern Lily featuring traditional applique associated with the South...

Dixie Rose

And the North---Midlands Lily

Prints in the Civil War Reunion collection range from mid-century to the 1890s. A paisley named "Women's Relief Corps" recall fashions popular in quilts and clothing through the war and postwar years for daughters of both the Union and the Confederacy.

Look for more about Civil War Reunion in the next few months.