Emporia Quilts: Charlotte Jane Whitehill's Tomato Flower

Tomato Flower by Charlotte Jane Whitehill, Emporia, Kansas

hand quilter unknown, 

1932, 84" x 86"

Denver Art Museum Neusteter Textile Collection, 

Gift of Charlotte Jane Whitehill, 1955.66

If it's mid-June our new book Emporia Rose should be in your quilt shops (Well, we can hope.) Any day now.....

Karla Menaugh and I have been thinking about the Emporia quilts for years. I first discovered the Emporia quiltmaking community in 1985 when the Kansas Quilt Project traveled around the state documenting quilts and we found that many of the most dynamic mid-twentieth-century quilts had some link to the town. 

Charlotte Jane Whitehill (1866-1964) about 1950, 

with her version of the Paradise Garden (quilt's current location unknown.)

Charlotte Whitehill was one of the leaders in that small-scale revival of traditional quilts. Most of her quilts are in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.

Tomato Flower by Charlotte Jane Whitehill, detail

We chose one of our favorites, her Tomato Flower, as inspiration for a block in our Emporia Rose sampler.

Tomato Flower by Ina Mae Carney for an Emporia Rose sampler

We simplified the design and shortened Lottie Whitehill's stems a bit so the block would fit into our sampler format

The Tomato Flower is at top left in my version of our

Emporia Rose sampler.

See the Emporia Rose book cover over on the left and click on it or click here:

http://www.amazon.com/Emporia-Rose-Appliqu%C3%A9-Quilts-Historical/dp/1607058901/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=barbbracsmate-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=&creativeASIN=1607058901

 To see more at the C&T website:

http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=3174

Read a review at Publisher's Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60705-890-8

Broken Star Variations

I found this variation on the large central star quilt at the Smithsonian website.

It looks like the quilter had many of the parts for the standard Broken Star 

(BlockBase # 4007.5)

as in the Amish example above---

but followed her own muse.

Some quilters added their own ideas

and some subtracted a few parts. This one with a pink

border and diamonds of claret red and indigo prints may

be about 1900.

Mid 20th century?

From the Winedale collection at the University of Texas

Here the central star has been subtracted

And here some corners have been added.

I'm glad I stopped indexing patterns in the early 1970s. People have been

exercising a lot of creative options with this star geometry

particularly the Amish as in these two recent quilts

And the Lakota people as in the one below.

Red Bottom Tipis from the Smithsonian site.

I'm calling all these variations on BlockBase # 4077.5

See more about plain old

BlockBase # 4007.5 at this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-few-broken-stars.html

Modernism, Anachronisms & Jane Austen

 Anachronism: chronological inconsistency

Above we have Jane Austen from about 1810 in a dress print from about 1910.

I don't think she'd buy into this idea.

Block 1 Bright Star for Jane Austen

by Cookie's Creek

But a few of the participants in my Austen Family Album quilt block of the week are making up the patterns in my 2013 reproduction line Modernism, which echoes the early 20th century.

Block 1 Bright Star for Jane Austen

by PinkDeenster

Block 2 Sister's Choice for Cassandra Austen

by Pink Deenster

Block 3 Cross Within Cross for George Austen

by Cookie's Creek

Block 3 Cross Within Cross for George Austen

by PinkDeenster

Block 4 Thrifty for Mrs. Austen

by Cookie's Creek

Block 4 Thrifty for Mrs. Austen

by Dustin Cecil

Block 7 Philadelphia Block for Aunt Phila by Cookie'sCreek

I Photoshopped some blocks

and added virtual borders

See our Flickr page here:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/austenfamilyalbum/

A Few Broken Stars

Here is a great idea but one not often seen. While there are many large Star-of-Bethlehem-style quilts with applique in the empty spots, here is a vintage Broken Star filled in with flora and fauna.

Looking at the photos posted in the online auction one would

guess it's 1840-1880 by applique style and what little

glimpsed of the fabrics. It may be after 1880, which actually makes more sense...

Because the broken star pattern itself tends to have been made

after 1880.

When I indexed these large stars I gave this pattern the number 4007.5. In BlockBase the earliest published references I show are from the 1920s and '30s with Capper's Weekly (a farm magazine from Kansas) calling it Broken Star on June 15, 1925. That's the name that became the standard.

Broken Star pattern from a Mountain Mist batting wrapper

There are not many mid-19th century examples of the star inside a ring of star points.

Emiline R. Miller, Eastern Pennsylvania

Collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

Curators date this variation to 1835-55.

Mennonite or Amish?

Late 19th-early 20th century?

I've been sorting my pictures of star quilts over the past few months and the file on #4007.5 is full of later quilts. Many are  Amish or Mennonite dating to the early 20th century like the one below by an Amish woman.

By Amanda Schrock, collection of the Illinois

State Museum and the Quilt Index.

Let's hope Amanda never saw how fugitive those blues turned out to be.

Made for Elsie Otto's wedding 1960,

in the Amish community in

Topeka, Indiana

Quilt dated 1887 in the collection of the International

Quilt Study Center and Museum. #2003.003.0159

Holstein Collection.

Perhaps based on the above pattern structure seen in Pennsylvania quilts

at the end of the 19th-century.

The majority of the vintage examples are from

the 20th century, but often hard to date within that

range because many were made from kits of pre-cut diamonds.

Signed on the back

M Fiene 1940

The diamonds are often cut from plain cottons.The only clues

to date might be subtle changes in taste in greens or color vibrancy.

An Aunt Martha kit

1940? 1990?

?

Aunt Martha/Colonial Quilts still sells kits:
http://www.colonialpatterns.com/shop/category/broken-star-quilt-kits/

Some quilters cut their own pieces from prints,

which makes the quilts somewhat easier to date

This top makes it easy to see why the kits were so popular.

This one is never going to lay flat.

Tim at TimQuilt's posted about some of the kits and die-cut quilts in his collection.

http://timquilts.com/2013/06/29/more-about-lone-star-quilts/