QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Sunday, March 24, 2024

Full Blown Tulip

 



One of my favorite patterns, this one offered a few years ago by
Molly at Fourth Corner Quilts.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
They call it "Full Blown Tulip.

Red and green calico blocks alternate with a chintz
pillar print in a blending of two styles---two ways of looking at fabric.

Same pillar print from Winterthur Museum's collection

Julie Silber's inventory. Chintz and calico?
1840s?

About 1840 the fashion for large-scale furnishing prints in a busy composition was
replaced by a trend to use smaller scale calico prints. The Full Blown Tulip blocks are
the new idea; the chintz becoming old fashioned. 

Ruth Finley in the 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts called the design
"Full Blown Tulip" with a photo of a Turkey red, green and chrome orange & yellow quilt:
The height of quilt fashion about 1850.

So how old is this rather complex design?
The earliest examples are variations in a quilt dated 1842 & 1843.

Philadelphia Museum of Art


Other date-inscribed examples:

1842-1844 Henry Ford Museum
Philadelphia, Bucks County & Chester County names

They call it a Reel Variation.


American Museum of Folk Art
1842-1843, Sarah Morrell

Lisa Erlandson Collection
1844 Sarah A White
Annapolis, Maryland

Michigan State University Collection
1845 Abraham Messler, Somerville, New Jersey
Messler was a minister in the Reformed Dutch Church.


1845 Album Sampler with Donoho & Young family
names, Maryland Historical Society

The dated examples indicate the design came in with the trend for red & green calicos, 1842-1845, later than I would have guessed.

BlockBase+ patterns numbered 36xx

It's a challenge to piece yet many pattern companies offered variations over the years. Some drafted them better than others. Number 3653 had good proportions and is well drawn but if you will notice neither Finley's photo nor the Ladies Art Company's California Rose tells you how to fit it into a block.


Probably some skillful piecers in the 1840s did not fit it into a square block but pieced it into another odd shape. As my computer program is BLOCKBase we fit it into a block---in a circle, but pieced edges might be better.

About 1950 from my collection

Online Auction

I redrew the BlockBase pattern for a 15-inch block.



Print on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.

In 1929 Ruby Short McKim published a pattern
in the Kansas City Star called Strawberry. She added an extra 
seam in the petals.

BlockBase #3640

McKim's name from a mid-20th-c sampler.

A few years later an Oklahoma reader sent another version to the Star.
A real challenge. BlockBase #3637.

1938 Chicago Tribune version

Variations have many names. I'm not going to count them all. I've always liked Victoria's Crown, another Finley name, although I have no idea how old that name actually is.

Online Auction

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

1876: New Fabric/New Ideas

 

Centennial commemorative calico from L.L. Carroll's collection.

One inspiration for quilt innovations during the Centennial year of 1876 was a good supply of novel cotton prints.


Mills printed commemorative calicoes and bandanas, which found an enthusiastic market. Above an ad in a Nebraska newspaper in May, 1876, offering 14 yards for $1.00, about 7 cents a yard. You were permitted to choose but did you get to mix and match?

Maybe you could choose two colorways of some of the prints like the
leaf with a date print in the center here, a different
color scheme than the same print at the top of the page.

Or three colorways in George Washington.

Chanute, Kansas Times
They were available around the nation.

June, 1876, Manitowoc, Wisconsin

 That year many communities held Centennial Calico Balls
in which women wore calico dresses and men calico print shirts,
 but I haven't found one that required Centennial calicoes.
You can, however, imagine the market.

One of the most detailed prints.

And a related patchwork print made into a doll quilt.

Printed in at least two colorways.

There were jokes...



And fiction.

Kenosha Times, June, 1876


National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian
The Bradbury Family quilt of Centennial print samples.

Merchant John Henry Bradbury was sent samples of Centennial prints for his New York City store.
Harriet Bradbury Rich (1861-1959) donated this quilt recalling that she, her mother and her grandmother began assembling the saved fabric into a simple pattern when she was twelve, about 1873. They might have chosen a nine patch to teach the twelve-year-old to piece but other quiltmakers
had other ideas.

Rather innovative ideas.

New England Quilt Museum Collection

Lydia Lamerson Thorpe, Clinton New Jersey, Hunterdon County Historical Society 
New Jersey project & the Quilt Index


I'll be posting more about Centennial quilts throughout the spring.

See a post about a Centennial print featuring Andrew Jackson:
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/05/lafayette-or-jackson.html

Friday, March 15, 2024

Phoebe's Favorite: Dogtooth Appliquexxx

 last block onmarch l 1

Thursday, March 14, 2024

1876: A Party

  

In a post a few days ago we looked at quilts date-inscribed
1875 and I concluded it was a dull lot.

Cindy's Antique Quilts
Echoes of past styles with a trend to pink if any design trends
were apparent.

Did that trend continue?

Laura A.B. Loring, New York
Massachusetts Project
"April 26 1876"

Aida Overton Walker
Was there nothing new?

How About a Party!

1876 was the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence, the birthday of the United States.


A year-long party that had an influence on quilt style.

From the Ohio project and their book
 Quilts in Community: Ohio's Traditions

The main site for celebration was Philadelphia, which put on "The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine or Centennial Exhibition" in Fairmount Park. Thirty-eight nations showed their wares in the fair, which was open May to November.

A two-sided quilt of fabrics printed to celebrate the anniversary.


Women, denied exhibit space in the other buildings, organized their own.

But NO patchwork quilts...well, maybe one allowed.

Boston Evening Transcript 1875



Eliza Hoskins Farris, always eager for a little publicity for her
quilts, told the Lexington, Kentucky paper that her
Henry Clay quilt was going to the fair. (Doubtful.)
Read more about her:

Merikay Waldvogel and I have been studying quilts at large fairs and international exhibitions and have found fairly consistently that newspapers often carried articles about quilts that were going to the fair. We've also heard family memories about a quilt that wowed them in Chicago, St. Louis or Philadelphia. When we checked official records we find most of those never made it to any exhibit hall. As you might notice, the people who managed these events did not hold quilts in high favor.

President of the Women's Committee Elizabeth Duane Gillespie was
 Benjamin Franklin's Great-Granddaughter.

Official exhibits aside, the Centennial anniversary led many quiltmakers to celebrate with original designs.


American Museum of Folk Art
By Gertrude Wendling Knappenberger (1815-1888), Pennsylvania

Top from an auction

From a Dana Auction

Monmouth County Historical Association/ New Jersey Project
Made from flag bunting.
Note says: "This bunting decorated the residence of ? 
M. Pemberton, 39 Bleeker St., Newark, NJ 1876".

Shelburne Museum Collection
By Minnie Burdick, North Adams, Massachusetts
Pictorial quilt with two views of the fair. Is the one on the left a view
of the Women's Pavilion?


Barbara F. Menasian found this sampler in Manchester, Connecticut.
Today's quilters have made many copies. Do a web search
for Centennial Quilt Project

The world of quilts was no longer as dull or sparse as it had been a year earlier. Somehow that 100th anniversary party sparked a revival of interest and many new looks. About which--- more in the next post:
Read more about Centennial Quilts at these posts: