Etsy Store & Retail Gossip

My retail division has been in disarray.

Not because of any weather disaster.

But from sheer disorganization on my part.

There have been many changes in the retail print business. It's tough to keep up.

Here's some retail gossip:

I've been writing quilt books for two publishers for quite awhile: Star Books from the Kansas City Star newspaper and C&T Publishing, which specializes in quilting and sewing media.

C&T recently bought Star Books. Now all my books and patterns are at one site:

http://www.ctpub.com/

If you do a search for Brackman at the C&T page you'll come up with quite a few items. If you buy $50 worth you get free shipping. And they have frequent sales so you will want to check the sale page often (it's a tab on the far right on their home page.)

You might go to used book outlets too---

But because the online pricing systems are run by computer algorithms that are not so sophisticated as one would hope you may pay more for a used copy than for a new copy from the publisher. 

Al Gorithm.

His ways are mysterious.

For example, my 2008 book Making History: Quilts & Fabric from 1890-1970 is on Amazon. On the day I am writing this you'd pay $37 for a used copy and $45 for a new copy.

If you buy it new from C&T Publishing you'd pay lots less:

$29.95

So do check the C&T page before you think you'll save money by purchasing a used copy.

Depending on supply and demand the computer pricing system might tell you something outrageous. Above: the same used book for $320.17 at Amazon on a strange day a few months ago.

Here's another alternative. Go to my Etsy store and

see what books I have in my basement.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop

I try to keep the pricing consistent with what C&T is doing. If C&T is having a sale you may be able to find my books cheaper there. But you may save money by shopping in my store because I charge very little for Post Office Media Mail shipping.

And I'll be glad to autograph your copy for you or as a gift.  I'll ask Karla & Deb to autograph the books they've worked on too. 

PS: You'll find several model quilts we've made for the books at the Etsy store too.

Mary Stites Medallion,

which I made for America's Printed Fabric is on sale too.

When you buy a quilt model we'll throw in the book it's from too.

Alice's Scrapbag: Mama's Apron

Village Commons by Bettina Havig

Bettina Havig used Alice's Scrapbag prints plus a pale white print for a model for a class she teaches. 

She's donating the top to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah where quilters will finish it to demonstrate hand quilting.

"Mama's Apron" is the largest print in Alice's Scrapbag, my latest reproduction fabric collection from Moda

Photographer: Hugh W Diamond, early 1850s

English woman posed in a patterned apron

similar to the print called "Mama's Apron."

We liked this design so much we printed the floral in six colorways.

The collection has seven reproduction colorways

Formal portrait about 1865

Library of Congress

You don't often see mid-19th century-women posed in patterned aprons.

More often you see a show apron like the pleated example on the left

 or a starched white apron.

Black silk aprons were part of presentable dress.

Cotton calico aprons were apparently not, although they 

were common everyday dress.

Despite the hard wear they saw many cotton print aprons survive.

The American Textile History Museum owns

a calico apron made from an 1876 Centennial print.

This vintage photo from about 1910 pictures a woman who looks like she could be from my family. She's glowering because somebody is taking her picture in her everyday dress. I can still hear my mother saying, "Wait a Minute," as my dad snaps a kitchen scene in the 1950s. She takes off her apron and her glasses. Then she's ready to pose.

I think the only reason the woman above has been captured in her patterned apron is because she is living in a mental institution. Dr. Hugh Diamond photographed patients at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum in England in the early 1850s.

A patchwork apron?

Apron or pinafore?

Antique Quilt Exhibits: Fall 2015 & Winter

Time to plan an excursion to see some antique quilts

in these museum shows for fall 2015 and into the winter.

California, Santa Ana 

Bowers Museum. The Red That Colored the World; Cochineal. 100 objects-textiles, sculpture, paintings, manuscripts, decorative arts, clothing and more- the exhibition explores the history of cochineal and the seductive visual nature of red.
Through March 21, 2016
http://www.bowers.org/index.php/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/417-the-red-that-colored-the-world

Kentucky, Paducah
Quilt Museum

Red Cross quilt from World War I

The Eleventh Hour: Quilts of World War I, curated by Sue Reich.
November 13, 2015 - February 9, 2016
http://quiltmuseum.org/

Massachusetts, Lowell
New England Quilt Museum.  Red, White & Green: Antique Quilts from the Permanent Collection

November 5, 2015 - February 20, 2016
http://nequiltmuseum.org

From Quilts of Southwest China

Michigan, East Lansing
Michigan State University Museum. Quilts of Southwest China. American and Chinese museums, led by the MSU Museum and the Yunnan Nationalities Museum (Kunming), have documented Chinese patchwork tradition for this exhibit up through April 30, 2016.

http://museum.msu.edu/?q=node/1312

Quilt by an Unknown Maker, Cargo Collection

Nebraska, Lincoln
International Quilt Study Center & Museum/Quilt House

Plus: African-American Quilts from the Cargo Collection. Through May 25, 2016

Lover's Knot, mid-19th-century

Favorites from the Byron and Sara Rhodes Dillow Collection, showcases beautiful and rare chintz, toile, and calico in quilts and textiles that express the Dillows’ passion for fabric. Through August 23, 2016.

http://www.quiltstudy.org/exhibitions/nowshowing/

Applique quilt,

 Ernestine Eberhardt Zaumseil, ca. 1865. Chandlerville, Illinois. 

Gift of George E. Schoellkopf, 2013 (Detail)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York, Manhattan
Metropolitan Museum of Art. American Quilts and Folk Art includes recent quilt acquisitions in two rotations: The first with 8 quilts through January 8, 2016. The second through August 7, 2016.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/american-quilts-and-folk-art

Oklahoma, Kingfisher

Seay Mansion. Charity, Companionship & Comfort- A Historic Quilt Show. Chisholm Trail Museum will show 40 quilts from November 1, 2015 through the winter.

http://www.ctokmuseum.org/quilt-show.html

Oklahoma, Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Quilts and Color from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Nearly sixty quilts with bold palettes and inventive designs from the Pilgrim/Roy Quilt Collection.

November 7, 2015-February 7, 2016

http://www.okcmoa.com/quilts-and-color-from-the-museum-of-fine-arts-boston/

Detail of Wheels Quilt

Collections of the Quilt Museum

Pennsylvania, Doylestown

James A. Michener Art Museum. Blanket Statements: New Quilts by Kaffe Fassett and Historical Quilts from the Collections of the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York, UK.  Fifteen historical quilts from 1780 and 1949 and twenty from Kaffe Fassett's studio. November 14, 2015 - February 21, 2016.

The show will travel to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles in spring, 2016.

http://www.michenermuseum.org/ 

Virginia, Harrisonburg
Virginia Quilt Museum. The American Quilt Study Group's Civil War Era Quilt Study will be up from November through March 1, 2016.
100 Years of Quilts: The Unger Family.
Treasures of the Vault: Curator's Choice.
http://www.vaquiltmuseum.org

Virginia, Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg, McCarl Gallery. A Celebration of Quilts. Through June, 2016.
http://www.visitwilliamsburg.com/events/a-celebration-of-quilts/

The Cap Set Give Away is Over

The secret word was favorite and Pjaabney was the first to use it.
Here's what she said. "Up until Alice's scrap bag, my favorite was Civil War Jubilee."

Shameless compliment mongering on my part I know.

I'll ship the samples off and thank the rest of you

for commenting.

Headers & Cap-Sets Moda Giveaway

Samples of Alice's Scrapbook fabric

Cap-sets

A couple of months ago Carrie Nelson at Moda blogged about some fabric industry jargon I was not familiar with. The sales reps' samples like those above are called cap-sets.

I've got a set of Alice's Scrapbag---Four cap-sets showing the four colorways of all the prints. The Give Away is over but you may want to read about cap sets.

Spring 2015 Market cap-sets from Moda

More about Cap-sets

This is the format shop buyers see when they are deciding on fabric purchases. Each sales rep gets a set from each new collection to take on their rounds.

I looked online in old texts for a definition of cap-set and didn't find much until recently, so it must be a fairly new term for an old format. 

A cap set of upholstery samples from the 1960s.

I'd have called it a sample book.

Each piece is the same size and the cardboard seems to hold

a whole season's collections.

The swatches, sorted by color, are held together with cardboard folded over the top. Carrie says a cap-set is also called a header.

The Moda Warehouse right before Quilt Market

The pieces are cut by machine (we have some impressive cutters both mechanical and human) but the various-sized pieces have to be organized and evened-up by hand.

Then they are rolled up and each sales rep gets one.

Here's Carrie's informative blog post:
http://blog.modafabrics.com/2015/05/all-in/

A Civil War Quilt? Dating Basics Say No

Four Patch Quilt

82" x 88"

I saw this quilt recently in an online auction where it was advertised as a Civil War quilt dated 1865. Right away the style made me wonder how accurate that date was. I found that the date is on a note attached to the quilt. I keep a file of quilts with dates inscribed on them and I've learned to ignore quilts dated in a note or label rather than on the quilt.

Fifteen years ago, the seller bought the Four Patch from a friend, a niece of Sarah Elizabeth Lowe (1845-1916). The niece had written the note. She wasn't sure of the quilt's exact date but thought it had been made near the end of the Civil War.

The seller provided many good pictures of the fabric, which made the quilt's actual date rather easy to

figure out. 

The first thing to note is the presence of a black on white, silvery gray fabric.

These prints offer a basic clue to quilt dating. They were not printed before 1890 or so.

A second good clue: claret red prints. Again, these simple white

on wine red prints were abundant after 1890 but not seen before that.

The backing also offers a clue. You may not be able to see it

but an enlargement reveals that it is a gauzy muslin, the kind

of fabric I grew up calling unbleached muslin

or cheesecloth.

This is a backing you do not see in the mid-19th century.

It's far more common in the early to mid-20th century.

It has fine yarns and few threads per square inch.

The embroidered M (or is it a W?) is a mystery. 

I found a little about Sarah Elizabeth Graves Lowe at the website Find A Grave, She is buried in Washington County, Kentucky, where she apparently spent her whole life. She was born November 8, 1845 and died March 16, 1916 at 69 years old. She might have made this quilt towards the end of her life, sometime between 1890 and 1916.

Her nickname was Bet. She had six children, one with the lovely name of Zanie Bugg. Bet may have made this quilt for Mary Etta if that's an M..

Sarah Lowe's Children:

William Schyluar Lowe (1866 - 1929)
Mary Etta Russell (1868 - 1950)
James M. Lowe (1870 - 1881)
Gertie Lowe Russell (1880 - 1944)
Elmer Eugene Lowe (1884 - 1964)
Zanie Lowe Bugg (1890 - 1975)

Well I've gotten off on a tangent with Zanie Bugg.

 We can learn a few things from the quilt and its note.

1) Always be skeptical of a date on a note or a label. A well-meaning descendant can be quite inaccurate.

2) Black and claret cotton prints are excellent clues to dates after 1890. You do not find those prints in mid-century quilts.

Album quilt date-inscribed 1899

Michigan Quilt Project, picture from the QuiltIndex

Diamond four patch date-inscribed 1909

See more about black cotton prints at my Civil War blog this week:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/09/stars-in-time-warp-38-black-gray-and.html

I'll discuss the claret reds next Wednesday (October 7)

on my Civil War Quilts blog.