The DAR Museum has this Alabama quilt in their collection
that looks to date from about 1880 to 1930 when the pattern
was fashionable and the dyes were fugitive.
We'd call it Pickle Dish or Indian Wedding Ring.
The brown was probably once another color.
If there is no information---it's an internet picture
Maybe red...
East Tennessee
A popular color with this design.
From Quiltmaker magazine. Now in the collection
of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum
Mary High Prince, Bedford County, Tennessee
Sarah Crumly Jarrard (1853-1925) White County, Georgia from the
Georgia Quilts book.
Malinda Youree McCrary
Tennessee Project
Red could fade all kinds of ways.
From the Wyoming project. No information.
For the most part the claret or wine-colored reds were colorfast.
The smaller salmon pink triangles were probably once bright red.
Once red?
And teal blue/green?
But the Alabama quilt might once have been green.
An overdyed green that has kept its color
Kathryn Johnson, North Carolina project. The family called it Tobacco Leaf.
Solid greens from synthetic dyes were prone to fade to khaki between
1880 and 1930 when the pattern was popular.
Tennessee project, Lucy Ann Templeton Johnson.
Their pictures have faded blue over the years but
the notes indicate the fading color as green.
Green?
Mary Pinson, Arizona project. Made in Texas, died in 1892
The points look green here. The whole quilt is
a study in fugitive color.
That synthetic teal blue-green that is so pretty until
it fades, a common fate.
But the Alabama quilt could have been blue
Collection Pinal County Historical Society
Blues from the same time period can fade too
Laura Jones Pressgrove, Tennessee project, family name was
Bat Wing
Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art
Looking at these quilts from about 1890-1925 one realizes
how many rules there were about color. There is certainly a
conventionalized style going on here.
Where are the quilts with chrome orange
as the neutral background or scraps of brown dress prints?
Everybody seemed to understand the color & fabric rules.
Until the rules changed.
Until Kansas City Star designer Eveline Foland
published an "old Virginia pattern" in October, 1931.
She thought the small triangles should be solid colors
and the larger pieces prints.
The reverse of what happened in the late 1920s.
In 1933 "Hope Winslow," a pen name
used by H.H. VerMehren's DesMoines company
gave it the name Indian Wedding Ring.
She advised you to make it in two colors: tan and brick red.
Perhaps she had seen an example like the one at the top of the page.
Did anyone follow Hope's advice in 1933?
Within a year she changed her mind, suggesting "gay-colored prints with
your favorite colored background."
You can call it what you like.
Hope seems to have over romanticized some popular culture
with her Indian Wedding Ring name.
But I am sticking with Pickle Dish.
Mary Ann Brown Barnes's daughter told the Tennessee project this was a Sawtooth.
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