Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Cleopatra's Puzzle or King Tut's Crown

Collection of the Indiana State Museum,

attributed to Randolph County, Indiana

Date guess: 1880-1940 as it's the popular red and white

combination fashionable in those decades

Another way to look at the pattern. Two blocks of four curved pieces.

Or if you look in the corners of the quilt above for the repeat:

The Chicago Tribune's quilt column published the designs as Cleopatra's Puzzle in 1933. And the Prairie Farmer magazine called it King Tut's Crown.

Cleopatra & King Tut ---did someone see something Egyptian?

The picture files don't contain many examples and

those like this wool quilt with seam-covering embroidery

and the red & white one could be early 20th century? But then again they could

be 1940.

The few pictures I do have appear to date after the Nancy Cabot publication.

Way After

Polyester double knits

Quilters in Missouri mentioned it in the social column

1935

1955

Let's hope that isn't the same quilt 20 years later.

Here's another of those hard-to-date red & white

quilts that has an odd repeat.

The pattern doesn't intersect in the corners to

make secondary designs like many Drunkard's

Path relatives.

I drew it in EQ8 and tried some different shadings in 2 or 3 colors.

And different sets

If one liked making squares with a quarter circle in the corner....

Monday, September 5, 2022

Quilts Dated 1944

1944

This Iowa friendship quilt is dated 1944---after the introduction of dress print commodity bags in the late 1930s so the prints as well as the solids and whites could all possibly be from feedsacks. 1944 was the fourth year of World War II---cotton as yardage very hard to find. Just by the context of the date we might guess the fabric is recycled sacking---but it’s a guess.

I have photos of 25 quilts dated 1944.

The file dated 1934 has twice as many.

I remember Nebraska farmer Ernest Haight telling me how he’d go to the store nearly every day during the war, hoping to find new cottons for his patchwork.

E H with old-fashioned taste dated a Bear's Paw with

Turkey red thread

Somehow she had enough true Turkey red to finish this quilt.

1944

Can we call the style old-fashioned or classic?

The popular album design going back 100 years

in up-to-date dress prints.

The problem was that cotton and cotton fabrics were going to supply the war.

1944

The shortage seems to have gotten worse after D-Day and other European victories as the U.S. concentrated on the War in the Pacific. Dr. Claudius T. Murchison was the industry's spokesperson during the War.

An imaginary feedsack for Dr. M.

Director of the Cotton Textile Institute during the war.

Nebraskan Mrs. Heitz didn't get why she was forced

to buy feed she didn't want when, "You can't buy material to

make a house dress."

The reason: The government had declared sacking for feed, fertilizer and other commodities a necessity while yardage for clothing was a luxury. A certain amount of printed yardage went to the bag manufacturers---bolts of cloth for the dry goods department not a priority.

But if it was important, people found a way:

1944

Collection of the Dorcester Historical Society

True Blue Class of Spedden Church Dorcester County, Maryland

The style may look old-fashioned but this quilt honoring men in the Army and Navy is dated 1944. Sue Reich uses the term Roll Call Quilt to describe these name quilts listing soldiers and sailors.