Unusual Pattern in a Silk Quilt

 

Found this quilt dated 1897 a couple of

weeks ago in an online auction. A great

example of the silk fashions of the late 19th century.

It looks like A.P.B. saw a lot of possibilities in the 60 degree triangle. She cut

some diamonds out of a crazy quilt and pieced some out of fans. It would seem like one of a kind.

There's nothing similar in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. 

This is all I have found published in pieced 60 degree diamonds.

Not many experimented with diamonds in this way.

Common shading for the 60-degree diamond design.

When I posted APB's quilt Laura Syler had another example to show. A Sunday School friend found it after her husband's death and showed Laura the photo. It looks to be polyester and/or knits, dating it to the mid-20th century or later.

Not nearly as well planned or well-stitched it does indeed

look to be the the same odd pattern.

Three 60-degree diamonds for each hexagonal block.

One of them pieced in a fan design.

Print this for a hexagon about 5-1/2" across.

We aren't going to make it in silk---it's the age of cotton.

How about a version in my next William Morris reproduction

collection Morris Manor?

We are taking preorders now for March delivery.

The fan diamond alone as a repeat tessellation.

Do look at a related design, another fan redrawn to fit a diamond, in this post on Emma Wolfe's quilt. Emma did not use a 60 degree diamond. To my confusion.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/03/emma-wolfes-tessellating-quilt.html

Time Travel 1938

 

 

Time Travel---Back to 1938

Not the best year ever

but a good one for the textile collection

at the National Museum at the Smithsonian

The museum in the early 20th century

According to their 1938 annual report:

"The collections of early American homecraft textiles and needlework were considerably enhanced by gifts and loans, totaling 8 coverlets, 6 quilts, a linen tablecloth, 38 specimens of fine needlework, and 8 specimens of hair work. 

Betsy Totten's quilt from Marvel Matthes

Among these were: A cotton patchwork and applique quilt, “The Star of Bethlehem,” made in 1810, presented by Mrs. Marvel Mildred Matthes, West Brighton, N. Y.; 

Quilt presented to Ellen Calder dated 1851 (?)

"An 'album' or 'autograph' quilt, made in 1849, a gift of Mrs. Laura 

Calder Stonebraker, Hyattsville, Md." 

Two applique quilts attributed to Lizzie Lisle

"FLANNERY, Mrs. J. P., Baltimore, Md.: 2 bordered appliqued quilts made between 1866 and 1870 by the lender’s aunt, Lizzie Lisle (Mrs. Eden Randall), of Cadiz, Ohio (144535, loan)"

See a recent post:

Strip quilt attributed to Lovisa Seeley Gates

"Lewis, ELEANOR CC. Yellow Springs, Ohio: (Through Mrs. Adelia D. Bauer) 1 pieced cotton quilt in a stripe pattern made about 1840 in New York State by the donor's grandmother, Mrs. Lovisa (Seeley) Gates (1796-1861) (145004)."

The report mentions six quilts but I could find only five. Th quilt below may have been deaccessioned or just re-labeled.

"LANE, Mrs. C. A., Bozman, Md.: Early nineteenth century quilt, pieced in 8-pointed star pattern and joined with squares of hand-blocked chintz, made by an ancestor of the Lane family (147894)."

These annual reports are good sources for a little more about the donors, which can lead us to more information about the makers.

The Totten quilt, a real treasure

.

Emma Wolfe's Tessellating Quilt

 

Silk Quilt by Emma Jane Seipt Wolfe (1855-1922)

Like other silk designs pieced over foundations this one

probably dates from about 1875 to 1910. Documented by

 the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index

A note stitched to it, however, tells us it was a gift for

son Russell Wolfe in 1913. It might have been long

finished by then. 

Son Russell Wolfe (1882-1977)

Russell's nephew, another Russell Wolfe (1924-2015), died in

Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the probable owner when

the quilt was documented.

Pennsylvanian Emma was from a family of German immigrants who came to Colonial America in 1734. The "Schwenkfelders" sought freedom to practice their religion, a type of Protestantism advocated by Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig in Silesia, then a German state, now in Poland's borders. Emma's ancestors David and Judith Seipt were among the 1734 group of over 100 refugees.

Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1490–1561)

remained in Europe

Schwenkfelders settled in Montgomery County northwest of Philadelphia. Emma lived as a
child in Lansdale and in Philadelphia as an adult. The family attended the Worcester Schwenkfelder Church, where many of them are buried in the cemetery.

Emma may have been a pupil at the Moravian School in Bethlehem as she left them a bequest in her will.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=11-37-3436

Father Anthony H. Seipt (1825-1902) was a storekeeper, which may have given Emma some access to a variety of silks. In 1877 she married Dr. Samuel Wolfe. They spent much of their married life in Philadelphia where he taught medicine at Temple University.

Samuel Wolfe 1851–1937

The 1910 census tells us Emma gave birth to 4 children of whom 3 were living. Baby Mott Leroy Wolfe had died in 1879.

Their home at 1701 Diamond Street

Close to Temple University

Emma died of heart failure in Salt Lake City in 1922 where her death certificate tells us she had lived for seven months after joining son James who was a Utah lawyer and later a judge.

1923 card in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia Inquirer January 1923

Emma left a substantial estate. Husband Samuel remarried and died in Florida in 1937.

The quilt is pieced of patches of one diamond shape. A few are plain silks. A ring of black diamonds with embroidered florals frames the center gold star.

Most of the pieces are what might be called string-pieced diamonds.

She started with a diamond-shaped foundation of fabric or paper and laid 5 strips, covering one end with a curved piece of black silk.

I tried drafting it and found out Emma used neither of the common diamonds found in patchwork. It is not one with the 45 degree angle that makes an 8-pointed star.

As there is a 6-pointed star in the center she must have started with a diamond with a 60 degree angle that tessellates but may have tweaked her background shape a bit. She realized something I'd forgotten. Any four-sided shape will tessellate. It doesn't matter what the angles are as long as the same shape is repeated. 

It looks like she connected long strips of diamonds and eased them to meet to form that center star.

Skinny or squat quadrilaterals as long as each is the same.

The trick is getting them to meet in a central star.

Note that she finished out the corners with strips of green.

A little geometry, a lot of silk. It's all you need.

Print this sheet out for a pattern.

More on her family:

Emma's father's obituary

and her husband's

Schwenkfelder culture is well documented in Pennsylvania:

https://www.schwenkfelder.org/pa-german-textiles

Silk Quilts in Kentucky: Source of the Silk

 

Kentucky quilt

Silk in Kentucky seems to have been rather abundant as one characteristic of the state's quilt history is many silk patchwork extravaganzas from about 1840 on. Despite the mountainous area's inaccessibility in the age of railroads the quilts give us much evidence of the luxury fabric's availability, at least in the major cities of Lexington and Louisville.

Kentucky quilt in satins, velvets and brocades from the Filson Society's collection.

Kentucky Historical Society

Silk Star of Bethlehem attributed to Ann Eliza Belrichard 

Bryan (1835-1867) of Louisville

A subset of Kentucky's quilt heritage is a group of quilts from rural Logan County, attributed to the plantation called The Knob near Russellville.

The silk quilts are unusual in their shared star designs and stuffed-work

quilting. The three are attributed to the enslaved seamstresses at the Morton family's

plantation the Knob.

The Knob about 1860

Not exactly the nostalgic image of the old Kentucky home but

the buildings to the right are the homes of the slaves,

which included Ellen and Margaret to whom the quilts are attributed

by the Morton owners who donated them.

Russellville would seem an unlikely spot to find such sophisticated silk fabrics before the Civil War and the late-19th-century abundance of silk factory cutaways that were made into crazy quilts. Quilts grow out of the available fabric. How was this luxury fabric, primarily produced in China, available to the Morton women?

A Shaker sister named Indiana Pilkington wearing the

traditional sisters' accessory of a silk scarf. The photos

are from the Shaker Museum at South Union, KY.

 I was re-reading Claire Somersille Nolan's 2005 paper "The Star of Bethlehem Variation Quilt" in Uncoverings 26 and realized she had a ready answer. Near Russellville a Shaker community thrived for many years. Claire tells us:

Americans interested in communal living and silk culture tried silk production, but maintaining the silk worms and harvesting their filament was just not suited to the American temperament and experiments soon failed. The Chinese were masters of sericulture and continue to be today. The Shakers' interest in silk production and the sale of their silk scarves probably affected Kentucky quilts style down by the Tennessee border.

Read Claire's paper here:

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/do/search/?q=author%3A%22Claire%20Somersille%20Nolan%22&start=0&context=52045&facet=

She found out quite a bit about Ellen Morton Littlejohn and Margaret Morton Bibb. The Morton slaveholders were skillful at keeping records of their own lives and often mentioned the Black people who lived with them. Both women were daughters of Eve (born about 1805) who also had three boys Dick, Joe and John (or was it Ned.) The Shaker Museum has Morton family files where Claire found this photograph.

Plantation owner Marmaduke Morton's son David was born in 1833 and his mother died soon after his birth. He recalled being raised by his stepmother (his mother's sister) and "Aunt Eve, who nursed me as a baby and both caressed and scolded me as a little child." 

Claire did her research 20 years ago. I bet we can find out quite a bit more about

Eve and her family today and a couple of other quilts attributed to the Mortons.

UPDATE:  

A 1993 paper on Shaker silk production, which seems to have begun in the 1830s.

Parker, Donna C. and Jeffrey, Jonathan J. Sericulture, Silk and South Union Shakers. The Shaker Messenger, Volume XV, Number 1, 1993.

"Extant Shaker kerchiefs in the collections of Shakertown at South Union and The Kentucky Museum at Western Kentucky University reveal the color combinations the Shakers produced.  Rose, lavender, purple, and white examples make up the bulk of these collections, but items of a green, a mustard, and a brown plaid also exist.  In 1869, Sarah Bates of Mount Lebanon, New York, wrote to Eldress Nancy that she was "fitted out for nice silk Handkerchiefs, of many qualities and many colors.  One White, three mixed colors Red blue &c and mostly by your hard labors, at Pleasant Hill and South Union."  Many times Shaker Sisters wove handkerchiefs so they had a "changeable," or iridescent quality.  They achieved the illusion by using one color for the warp thread and another color for the filling."  

https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/dlsc_fac_pub/21