Oxford English Dictionary: Hobby Words

I received a note from Kate at the O.E.D.
(I am totally knocked out to get an email from the O.E.D.)

The O.E.D. (Oxford English Dictionary)

is the world-wide standard for English word use.

Kate says they are looking to social media to identify words having to do with various hobbies, including quilting---Our jargon.

Here's her note:

"Can you help the Oxford English Dictionary identify and record the words, phrases, and expressions unique to quilters and quilting? Words used by people when talking about a shared pastime can be little-known to outsiders, and are often interesting coinages with unique histories. As part of their hobby word appeal, Oxford English Dictionary editors [asked for] words and phrases unique to quilting. Of particular interest are slang words and phrases (as opposed to more technical terms) as these are much harder to trace in print and so are less likely to have come to the attention of dictionary editors."

I thought we could compile a list here in the comments. So do comment with suggestions. She said she is looking more for slang than for technical terms that she could find in books, magazines....

So "Quilting By Checkbook" rather than "HST" I guess.

Sir James Murray in his Scriptorium full of paper slips with word usage information.

There may be prizes from MOI for the best words or most ideas.

On the 23rd of July I'll send the list to Kate at https://public.oed.com/appeals/hobby-words/
Kate also says: Join the conversation on Twitter #hobbywords.

And while you are thinking up words watch the old Barbara Stanwyck/Gary Cooper movie Ball of Fire, about a project very much like this one. Lexicographers looking for slang hire burlesque dancer Sugarpuss O'Shea.  It's one of the great screwball comedies (if you don't mind stereotypical cliches about ethnicity, class, intellectuals and gender).

UPDATE: There are some excellent contributions in the comments. I'll leave them up there and people can continue to comment. Kate should probably check every couple of weeks.

Virginia wrote that she and her friends call ill-advised quilts Bagpipe Quilts because like bagpipes they have to be appreciated from a distance.
Trash Bag quilts---made from small pieces of fabric. Also  called extreme scrap quilting

Here are some I thought of for the Scriptorium

Tack---tie a quilt (goes back to the 19th c)
Ball cotton--- Perle Cotton, a twist
Big Stitch for a large quilting stitch done with Perle Cotton or some thick thread
Cheater cloth --- print simulating patchwork
EPP---for English Paper Piecing,  basting to paper shapes and then sewing. New acronym
Dogtooth border--- an appliqued triangular border
Fussy cut --- cutting the fabric template to feature an area of the fabric's print
Pin Basting --- preparing the quilt top for quilting by sandwiching back, batt and top and securing with safety pins
Glue Basting ---Preparing applique for sewing by turning fabric edges under and gluing them 
Needle Turn --- a form of applique in which the fabric is not basted under but turned under with the needle as the piece is stitched down.
Sleeve - a tube of fabric on the back of the quilt through which a rod is placed for display
Self Binding---not using any extra fabric to bind the edges but turning in the top and back
Self quilting --- quilting around each patch
Quilt by Checkbook---pay someone to quilt your top
Cheddar---a particular orange color that looks like safety yellow or American cheddar cheese
Lancaster blue ---a late 19th century blue on blue print popular in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Poison green - any green you don't like too much
Potholder quilt - newish term for old technique of quilting and binding each patchwork block and then joining the squares.
Neon print ---black background with bright colored figures
Panel - printed vignette, sometimes framed,  meant to be cut out and featured

I'll send them all to Kate and let you know any updates.

Botanizing #5: Six Similar Samplers

"Wood Bine," the name embroidered or inked on a botanical

sampler in the collection of the Shelburne Museum.

The plant looks like what we out here in Kansas call Bindweed,

Convolvulus, an unwelcome guest in the garden.

This one's easier to identify:

"Full Blown Rose & Buds"

Like Esther Blair Matthews's Shenandoah Valley quilt this sampler has common

plant names inscribed on the blocks. It's in the collection of the Shelburne

Museum and probably dates, like most appliqued red & green samplers,

to about 1840-1870. The museum believes it to be from Pennsylvania.

"Poke Berries"

They know little about it but it does seem to indicate a strong link to the scrapbook herbariums, an extraordinary quilt. And what is even more extraordinary:

There are others very much like it.

Collector Carolyn Miller owns this sampler with a sawtooth border.

Some of the same blocks; wreaths cut for the edges.

Except Carolyn's doesn't have the plant names.

It has the same plain final border. Carolyn's is quilted

with a cable of six lines (a weak clue to a Pennsylvania origin?)...

While the Shelburne's has a feather and wreath motif in

the quilting. In both the blocks are quilted in parallel lines.

Other similarities include the sets: blocks placed side by side

on point with no sashing.

The set helps identify this one as a different quilt.

Same blocks but set with sashing and the blocks are quilted in a grid.

I found the detail photo floating around the internet.

And here's a fourth example, from auctioneers Pook & Pook.

Very much like the Shelburne's with a single plain white border...

So much like the Shelburne's that if you superimpose

one on the other they are almost identical.

No embroidered plant identifications though.

So here we have four very similar quilts.

How?

1) A teacher shared this pattern with her botanizing students.

2) Someone drew the pattern and shared it by selling it or giving it away.

3) Or one person made all four.

And here's a fifth, a top with a double sawtooth border in 

Donna Stickovich's collection.

This one includes other blocks, the blocks are sashed and set

on the straight.

Here are the Wood Bine and Poke Berries blocks, not so 

 skillfully done as the other examples.

But she obviously had a similar source.

And this is a recent addition to the file, from the Montana project

and their book. Green sash. Nothing known. 

The picture may just be a portion of the whole quilt.

All six include the Wood Bine

All six the Hop Vine

Hop vine

But only four have the Laurel.

 Mountain Laurel

All very inspiring.

And that's the end of the Botanizing here.

Botanizing #4: Pressed Leaves

Last year on my Civil War Quilts blog

one of the blocks was an autumn leaf.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/10/yankee-diary-10-leaves-of-autumn.html

The pattern is probably a sycamore leaf, drawn from a quilt in

the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Art.

Leaf tracings are a form of botanizing we see in mid-19th century samplers.

1841-1844 Mary Taylor

Smithsonian Collection

But there aren't many samplers of leaves alone.

Top by Mary Stayman of Leavenworth, Kansas, dated 1923, 

in the collection of the Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

On the back of each leaf Mary wrote the species name in pencil.

http://collection.spencerart.ku.edu/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=9028&viewType=detailView

New England leaves (about 1870) from the Binney Collection at

the New England Quilt Museum.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1D-FC-1744

And then there's Ernestine Zaumseil's extravaganza:

Branches & Vines by Ernestine Eberhardt Zaumseil (1828-1904).

She was born in Germany and lived in Ohio, St. Louis, 

and Pekin, Illinois. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/625591

Now that is some attention to detail!

Botanizing #3: "I love to look at nature pure"

Applique sampler from the Indiana Project & the Quilt Index. This quilt from the 1840-1865 period is the same one that Marie Webster pictured in her 1915 book Quilts:Their Story on page 79.

Niether photo is great but we can see that the unknown

maker included blocks drawn from nature.

Webster's caption for "Original Floral Design":

"This quilt contains twenty blocks, each of a different design. The border is composed of festoons decorated with cockscomb and sprays of flowers. A southern Indiana quilt made about 1825."

That date is doubtful. We've now seen a lot more quilts 100 years later and most authorities would date it as mid-century. It's in a private collection and the project documentation notes that it's still in good shape.

Some of the blocks seem to have been drawn from plants.

See the Indiana Project file here:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=68-104-11B8

Detail of an album sampler made for Rev. & Mrs. William George Eggleston

from the collection of Colonial Williamsburg

Botanical blocks are rather unusual. Here's a compound flower or fruit among the typical red and green blocks in a Maryland/Washington top dated 1844-1847. The botanical block is signed "E. R. Moore E[llicotts]. Mills"

Maybe E.R. Moore was depicting Pokeweed

Phytolacca americana

Another quiltmaker with a good eye for the natural world

from the Indiana Project. 

A wreath block on the Eggleston's quilts is inked:

"I love to look at nature pure,
I love to dwell on friendship's past,
And think it all forever sure
In one eternal rest at last.
Margaret Dushane Balt. '46"

Margaret illustrates the prevailing philosophy these quiltmakers embraced, a romantic view of nature with a reverence for the natural world, inspiring botanizing, poetry and applique florals.

Pressed moss

From the Sophia Denty album quilt in the Smithsonian.

And the Benoni Pearce quilt, also in that collection.