Floral Cretonnes

Tulip quilt with a cretonne border

19th century

from Laura Fisher at Fisher Heritage

www.laurafisherquilts.com

I've done a few posts on cretonnes,

the end-of-the-19th-century 

version of chintz furnishing prints.

I've shown several pictorial fabrics:

circuses and hunting scenes, dogs and cats.

But, as in nearly every print style, florals were the most popular.

Mills in France, England and New England did an

impressive job on the cretonnes of the 1880s and later.

They had perfected the drawing style and the

color registration

Roses are always in fashion.

Some designs were highly mannered

with exotic flowers made more

exotic by the artists.

One classic cretonne style pretended to look like

woven rather than printed design.

We love cretonnes at Moda and have

done many reproductions.

Double Chocolate repro by 3 Sisters

Meadow by Barb and Alma for Blackbird Designs

Rhubarb & Ginger by Blackbird Designs

Edyta Sitar for Laundry Basket Quilts

Shooting Star by Edyta Sitar

Love Letters by Edyta Sitar

Mariner's Compass pieced by Roseanne Smith 

in my

Arnold's Attic collection.

Here's my latest cretonne reproduction,

an exotic floral called "Love's Token" from the Ladies' Album

line coming out in March, 2014.

Here's a link to the whole collection:

http://storefront.unitednotions.com/storefrontCommerce/search.do?searchType=keyword&keyword=ladies+album&emailAddress=

A Few Feathered Stars: Names

The Illinois Quilt Research Project found this quilt assembled later from blocks and borders. The blocks are pieced in the pattern we'd call Feathered Star. In the border is appliqued:

Jackson*Star*Quilt*Made*1849

Leah*Thornburgh*B*0*7*1828

& Married*September*26*1844
ABCDEFHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Leah Thornburgh's blocks and appliqued borders were put together by a descendant in the 1990's but we can assume the words Jackson*Star*Quilt* refer to this design we would call a feathered star.

The Illinois project and authors Duane and Rachel Elbert assume that Jackson referred to President Andrew Jackson who died in 1845. He'd been an important politician and national hero since he won the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Elected President in 1827, he served two terms until his chosen successor Martin Van Buren was elected in 1836. Although Leah Thornburgh was a child during Jackson's presidency she may have supported his Democrat party where his name is still invoked as a hero and founder.

"Plain Sewing Done Here," Clay trying to inhibit President Jackson's rhetoric

in a cartoon from the Library of Congress.

The political connection is a pretty good bet as numerous patterns have come down to us with partisan references to the Jackson/Polk Democrats and the Henry Clay Whigs. Jackson and Clay were bitter rivals from the western states of Tennessee and Kentucky. Clay never won the Presidency. He ran against Jackson in 1832 and against Jackson's protege James K. Polk in 1844. 

Beauty of the Forest

History from the Heart also includes a second feathered star with a pattern name inscribed on it.

In the top left block of this undated quilt are the words "Beauty of the Forest," which may refer to the pattern. In the lower center border is a coat of arms of sorts, two horses facing an oval which may have a cornucopia of vegetables or fruit. In there are the words "Agriculture and Industry." 

Clay and Jackson differed over many things but one big issue was Clay's favoring American industry, supporting manufacturers with tarrifs on imports while Jackson preferred to support an agrarian culture with no taxes on European imports. Clay used the phrase "agriculture and industry" in some speeches and writing although a more important slogan was  "Protector of American Industry" or "Protector of Home Industry."

Here is a Clay ribbon from the 1844 contest with Polk.

At the top a form of a coat of arms with two horses.

And this Clay ribbon has a single horse at the top.

The use of horses as a Clay symbol seems rare, but perhaps the Beauty of the Forest quilt was made to show support for the Whig candidate, Henry Clay. The pattern may have been used as a political symbol. The name Beauty of the Forest may have meant a fancy star in an appliqued wreath too, another rare image.

So one could make the pattern whether one was a Democrat or a Whig.

The name I often see is Feathered Star, which I found first mentioned in Ruth Finley's 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts. Earlier names were Feather Star with the likely earliest published source of the Ladies's Art Company's pattern catalog going back to 1889. 

If you sent off a coin for the pattern

you received a sketch of the finished

Feather Star

Their 1898 catalog showed several versions with different names.

I looked through Google Books of the 19th century to see if Feather Star had any meaning then that has been lost. I did find numerous references then and into today for a Feather Star as an echinodermata (one of my favorite words) related to star fish.

Feather Star

Quite a pretty echinodermata...

That looks a lot more like a Princess Feather quilt pattern than a Feather Star.

Another name is Feather Edged Star, which Ruby Short McKim published in the late 1920s.

This variation has another star in the center.

(BlockBase #2260)

Perhaps made from McKim's pattern.

Similar pattern in a silk quilt with Masonic symbols, about 1850

by Eliza Hussey, Indiana, in the collection of the Smithsonian.

One more name:

Several years ago at a quilt documentation day in Kansas City, Kansas, a family brought in a mid-19th-century example somewhat like the quilt above and told us they'd always called it Tobacco Worm. With its green triangles the block did look something like the horny lime-green insect.

You may have seen these pretty things in your tomatoes.

They are called Tobacco Worms, Tomato Worms or Horn Worms.

Tobacco Worm is a quilt pattern name that never caught on.

A few more with green triangles that might qualify as Tobacco Worms.

From Fourth Corner Antiques

Dated 1937 by Elsa McEwen Pelton

From the Michigan quilt project and the Quilt Index

Howard County, Maryland

In these two the darker feathers are on the outside.

A Few Feathered Stars: Dated Examples

Quilt dated 1838 in the quilting

from my collection.

The blocks are on point.

Here's the block.

The quilt was found in Kansas.

Fabrics are indigo blue, a few browns and a pink on white.

There is an interesting lack of symmetry in the color placement.

You often see this color combination in quilts before

1840, simple dyes, simple prints.

The Spencer Museum of Art has a worn example

with the same kind of random color. I don't think

the colors have changed over time. These quilters

pieced blues to browns and pinks.

Here's a similar quilt from Delaware with a little more order

Susannah Miller

Maryland

Collection of the Winterthur Museum

Estimated date 1845-1848

Center of Susannah Miller's medallion, 

which has stuffed quilting and fringed edge.

The feathered star seems to combine two standard patterns from the time, an eight-pointed star and a sawtooth triangle with serrated edges...

Similar to this quilt by another Miller, sold at auction recently...

Dated 1816.

The same basic border triangles are seen in Amelia Lauck's quilts

dated 1822

and 1823

This Lauck quilt is in the collection of the DAR Museum.

This strip quilt from Jeffrey S. Evans auctions is

anonymous but I imagine I am not the only one

who sees Amelia Lauck's style in it.

Evans is located in Virginia.

http://www.jeffreysevans.com/index.php

Another anonymous feathered star plus sawtooth triangles available at Stella Rubin.

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/1017309/enlargement1017309sra.html

She dates this Pennsylvania quilt to about 1860.

Below are date-inscribed feathered stars from my 19th century files. First: the 1840s:

Quilt dated 1846 from the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

1997-007-0182

The basic pattern in buff and Prussian blue print.

Same year, 1846, in another fashionable fabric of the era:

Turkey red.

This is from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A year later, 1847, in an indigo blue print from

the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

1997-007-0039

Apparently two-color feathered stars (simple versions) were hot in the mid-1840s.

Feathered star block in an early sampler album found in the New Jersey

quilt project: Blocks dated 1842-1849

There was a lot of experimentation and individualization in the 1840s and '50s and some quilters improvised on the pattern.

Quilt dated 1847 by Sarah LaFever. 

Collection of the Huguenot Street Museum in New Paltz, New York.

Sarah added applique to the standard star. See more of the quilt at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog:

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/05/sarah-m-lefever-1847.html

Block from quilt dated 1849 found in the Illinois quilt project

(more about this 2-color star in another post).

Two from the 1850s:

Quilt dated 1856 by Sarah Burbridge---following her own muse.

Quilt dated 1857

from the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

1997-009-001

This variation never became a common pattern either.

One from the 1860s:

Center of a quilt by Hulda Harrington, dated 1868,

Shown at the Adirondack Museum in 2009.

Hulda's scrappy composition.

Two From the 1870s:

Center of a medallion by Gertrude Knappenberger,

dated 1876

Gertrude's Centennial medallion was as imaginative as her feathered star center.

See the whole quilt at the family site:

http://www.knappenberger.net/images/graphics/quilt.jpg

Quilt dated 1877 by Ann Frazee

One from the 1880s:

Quilt dated 1888

from the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

2003-003-0299

And three from the 1890s.

Quilt from Barry County, Missouri dated 1894.

It's probably lost a lot of color.

Quilt dated 1896 from Sharon Yenter's collection.

Pictured in Marsha McCloskey's Christmas Quilts.

This complex variation, now tan and red,

was probably blue or green with red.

Quilt dated 1899

from Fourth Corner Gallery

What can we learn from these date-inscribed examples?

1) The pattern was a favorite from 1840 on.

2) Quilters liked to add their own variations but it started out fairly simple.

3) The pattern appeared as early as the 1830s.