Blogs --- Quilt History Product

Family portrait at my house in the digital age

I'm planning my panel presentation for the AQSG meeting in Lincoln next month. Terry Terrell, Carolyn Ducey, Merikay Waldvogel and I are going to talk about The Future of Chintz Research.

I plan to talk about digital age products to share one's research findings.

My favorite digital format is the blog. (I'm also going to expend a few words of Facebook, Instagram, Web Pages and Pinterest. )

I'm a sucker for visuals.

So I did a little research on blogs that interest me. Now some people will tell you that blogs are so 2015. It's Instagram and Twitter....

...except 144 characters is fit for nothing of any depth.

Editor with red pencil

Blogs----I look at them as a quilt magazine with no editor.

Here's a list of some of the blogs I get in my email feed. I did notice that many of my favorite bloggers are shall we say ---older---

My age. We like a long format. Typing not tapping on a virtual keyboard.

Jean Harlow

These blogs are not in any order and they all include people who have posted in the last month or two. Some are about quilt history. Some get out a lot more than I do and post pictures of quilts they've seen. And some just post cool things.

Add some other URLs in the comments.

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/

Nancy Bekofske

https://bbquiltmaker.blogspot.com/

BarbaraBlack

http://www.esthersquiltblog.com/

Esther Liu

http://barbaradschaffer.blogspot.com/

Barbara Schaffer

http://quilts-vintageandantique.blogspot.com/

Lynn Evans Miller. Lynn's historical focus is quilter Emma Andres

https://utahquiltappraiser.blogspot.com/

Sandra Starley

https://humblequilts.blogspot.com/

Lori DeJarnette

http://theconstantquilter.blogspot.com/

Wendy Caton Reed

http://needleseyestories.blogspot.com/

Telling stories through the needles eye

Kara Mason & Teri Young

https://sentimentalstitches.net/

Gay Bomers

http://quiltfeather.blogspot.com/

Feather on a Wire

Sally Bramald

https://gladiquilts.wordpress.com/

Gladi Porsche

http://me-and-my-needle.blogspot.com/

Ageeth Dorsmann

Tonko/Thistly Room/ Mixed T Japan

http://thistlyroom.blog59.fc2.com/blog-entry-1159.html

I just love looking at her needlework.

http://quakerquiltsandhistory.blogspot.com/

Mary Holton Robare

Mary lost her blogging partner Linda Chenoweth last year but she's plugging on about Quaker Quilts. An exemplary quilt history blog.

Merikay and I are wrapping up our blog on Chintz Panel Quilts. I'm thinking about starting a new one on Regional Quilt Style: New York.

Cotton Facts

We're all big cotton consumers but we don't know much about it---at least it looks that way from the kind of comments I get about the price, importation, trade and the fabric advertised as "made in America," etc.

Cotton is so bound up in American identity that we seem to hear more myth than facts.

To understand the current industry you have to know the history---

Subtleties of different cotton plants, grades of fiber and geography

are not easy to understand.

French painter Edgar Degas worked in his family's cotton business

in Louisiana in the mid-19th-century. He painted a man grading cotton.

Marion Post Wolcott photo, Library of Congress

Same job, a century later

I  found a good summary of American cotton production in a history of Charleston. Walter J. Fraser, Jr. wrote Charleston! Charleston!: The History of a Southern City about 30 years ago.

Some quotes from the book:

"Sea-island cotton was a very fine, strong cotton that came to be grown near the coast from Florida to Georgetown, South Carolina. Although susceptible to damage by spring frost and autumn fog, it was grown successfully and shipped abroad through Charleston, Beaufort and Savanna until the boll weevil ruined the crop in the early twentieth century.

The Sea Islands are a barrier reef/tidal island chain from the Santee River

down to Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.

"Short staple or 'upland cotton', more difficult to weave in mechanical looms, was neither as strong nor felt as luxurious as sea-island cotton, and therefore never commanded as high a price. Methods of extracting seed for long-staple or sea-island cotton had been perfected earlier, but short-staple cotton remained of no commercial value until the new ginning technology introduced in the early 1790s by Eli Whitney.

Man operating a cotton gin (engine) that combs out the seeds

Freed slaves working at a cotton gin during the Civil War

Library of Congress

"Thereafter, since short-staple cotton could be grown in a far wider region than the sea-island cotton, it spread, and slavery with it...

Dark green shows sea island cotton areas. 

Short staple, upland cotton areas in lightest yellow-green.

Today's cottons range from Egyptian cotton's longest staple (fiber length)

down to American Upland. 

We do not grow Sea Island Cotton anymore.

"For years the upland cotton was exported almost exclusively through Charleston.... Cotton crops were planted in the spring, picked from September to October, ginned and compressed during October and November, and then carried to local ports for shipment to English and European manufacturing centers. 

Shipping cotton out of New Orleans, 1880s

Photo by William Henry Jackson, Library of Congress 

"After the collapse of the indigo market in the late 1790s because of the competition from British India, the [Charleston] export trade was based primarily on rice and cotton. In 1791 South Carolina grew 1,500,000 pounds of cotton, a decade later, 20 million and production doubled again within the next ten years."

Production drove the price down

The book:
Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Charleston! Charleston!: The History of a Southern City. University of South Carolina Press, 1990

https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/pre1993/9797.html

Cotton prices over a year 2018-2019

About 90 cents a pound last summer

The last I looked cotton was a little below 60 cents a pound, down 30% from the summer of 2018. The price of quilting cotton per yard may not drop but I'll be optimistic that it won't be going up soon.

Daredevils #6: Willa's Wheel

Daredevils #6 Willa's Wheel

Scroll down to see the pattern for a 15" finished block.

 #6 Willa's Wheel

Becky's actual block. She can't resist adding a few seams (more fabric!)

Fussy Cutting in the points ---you all knew she was a Daredevil.

Denniele Bohannon's block before the applique circles.

#6 by Dorry Emmer

As Dorry says, just using chartreuse makes you a daredevil.

The points in her center quarter circles are pieced.

Her inspiration: Karen K. Stone's piecing in her New York Beauty quilts.

Dorry has no easy button, she says.

Willa's Wheel was inspired by BlockBase #3561 published by Evelyn Brown in her quirky book called Quilting Do It My Way in 1975. She showed a variation she called Mountain Pink (the most traditional block in her daredevil book).

Ladies Art Company

It's one more way of constructing a popular block the Ladies' Art Company

called Rising Sun and the Kansas City Star Circle Saw.

BlockBase #3390

Added dots in the corner...Daredevils

The Block

Daredevils pattern for a 15" block.

Cut paper templates. Add seams to the fabric.

Just one sheet this week.

How to print:

Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11".

Click on the image above.

Right click on it and save it to your file.

Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". The small square should measure 1"

Adjust the printed page size if necessary.

The block would look great set all over

12 times...

or 9.

Nine of Becky Brown's Blocks

Willa Brown in 1935.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/brown-willa-b-1906-1992/

How Old is this Quilt?

Here's everything a quilt historian dreams about. 

An 18th-century quilt on eBay. Cheap.

The Maryland seller--- trying conscientiously, I suppose, to show the worst damage---

used this photo and advertised it as a cutter quilt with a starting bid of about $30. Good for repairs.

How old is this quilt?

Way old.

I didn't win it, which is a good thing as my home for orphan quilts is full up.

It went for a little over $200. I hope that means the buyer will treat it with some respect.

What's it worth? I don't know. As condition is important to value---not as much as one would

hope.

The first things that caught my eye:

• Medallion format
• White applique on dark
• Limited palette: brown prints 

Comparative dating means looking at similar pieces. First I looked at quilts with dates inscribed.

M. Campbell, 1795 Smithsonian collection

Similarities:

Floral vase applique

Floral border

Medallion format

Limited palette

Hannah John 1797

Maine project

Similarities

Floral vase applique

Medallion format

Floral border

Limited palette

Eby, 1803 Maryland project

Similarities
Floral vase applique
Medallion format
The palette is limited here but not so limited as the all dark brown style.

As you can see not many of these survive. More pictures: undated examples in similar style.

McGrary family, Western Carolina Museum

The DAR Museum photographed this one in a private collection.

Quilt Index files.

Ohio Historical Society

Shelburne collection, pictured in the Orlofsky book Quilts.

We definitely see a style going on here...

Related to other needlework of the era.

MESDA collection

Mary Elizabeth Doswell finished this embroidered piece in Mrs Woodson's

needlework class in 1802.

North Carolina Museum of History collection

Whitework stuffed quilting shown backlit in their current exhibit.

Other style characteristics to note:

White applique on dark 

Vine border growing out of the corner

Attributed to Susan Strong, Smithsonian

It's hard to tell if the applique is reverse applique or laid on top

from the pictures.

How old is the auction quilt? 1790-1810 for a 20 year guess. We can all hope the buyer has no intention of cutting it up for repair work.