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Monday, August 28, 2017

An Alabama Pattern

Quilt by Cyatus Fowler
20th-century
Birmingham Museum of Art
Cargo Collection of Alabama Quilts

Cyatus's pattern is unknown and unusual but such smart geometry that I'm surprised I had no other examples.
Strips of squares
Strips of diamonds.

I drew it in EQ7 by making a grid of squares
and then drawing diagonals in the alternate blocks.
I erased some lines in the diamond strips



EQ sez:
The squares (A) are cut 6-1/2"
The diamonds (C) are cut from 4-3/4" strips at 45 degree angles.
Each diamond should be 9-1/4" long on it's long side.
They are really not diamonds by parallelograms, but what the heck.
B is triangles for the edges of the diamond strips.
Squares cut 6-7/8" and then cut into triangles with a single diagonal cut.



Perhaps we should call it Alabama Roads.

Here are some similar ideas but these alternate rectangles and diamonds.

Kitty Corner from Keepsake Quilting.

Here's the closest I could come in the 19th century. And it's not very close.

Last quarter 19th-century.
Susan Dague's collection. Quilted later.

Last quarter, silks.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Mrs. Cleveland's Choice


Mrs. Cleveland's Choice
BlockBase #2481

Here's a complex design that's a late-19th-century pattern
designed by a commercial source with a reference to current events.

 
The Ladies Art Company published the block as
Mrs. Cleveland's Choice. Perhaps someone asked
Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of President Grover
Cleveland for her opinion.

 In 1886 21 year old Frances Folsom
married the President who was 49.



 As a First Lady in her twenties, Mrs. Cleveland was a fashionable celebrity. The patchwork pattern named for her inspired numerous quilts.






Setting the blocks side-by-side creates a different look.

Here it is in a BlockBase Quick Quilt.

Which you could view as two alternate blocks.
A combination of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit and a block of triangles.


The Quilt Index shows the triangle quilt below documented by the Massachusetts
project that is signed Mrs. Grover Cleveland.

So this might actually be Mrs. Cleveland's Choice.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1D-FC-B52

Monday, August 14, 2017

Star of the Bluegrass

Source? 
Quilt of chrome orange and blues
with sashing that may have faded to gray-brown,
late 19th century.

Stars pieced of diamonds seem among the most common of quilts.


But I'm surprised to find this particular arrangement is rather uncommon:
Four diamonds in each star point.
BlockBase #3772


I'm not short of published names.

Patriotic Star from the Kansas City Star in 1936.

But 19th-century examples are rare.

Here's a quilt dated 1842, the earliest example I have
of a star with four diamonds per point.

Thia one from Stella Rubin's shop. It could be about the same time,
about 1840.


The quilt at the top of the page looks to be late-19th century.

Blocks may be about 1900 when grays and blues popular,
set with more colorful sashing later.

Most are 20th century...

From Cindy's Antique Quilts

It seems to be a useful pattern with lots
of shading possibilities.

Most quilts in the design date to later than 1933

When a quilt from Kentucky won national attention at the 
Worlds Fair Quilt Contest sponsored by Sears.

Mountain Mist published the prizewinner
with its fashionable green color scheme and stuffed work quilting. 


They called it "Star of the Bluegrass" for Kentucky. Many seamstresses were inspired to make copies by their pattern (published in 1948). Right after the Fair Sears published a pamphlet about the contest containing an ad for a kit for the Star of the Bluegrass. Times were tough, but people bought the kit.

Found in the Wisconsin project, purchased at an
estate sale.

Elizabeth Nesbett Cooper, Crawfordsville, Indiana
Indiana Project

The family story is that Elizabeth ran out of that green fabric
so substituted black.

Mary (Marija) Soklic Bartol, Cicero, Illinois About 1933.

This one from the Quilt Index also has a story:
"1933 was a difficult year, the worst year of the Great Depression. Work, and therefore income, was irregular, so my family's entertainment was making quilts. And since fabric cost money, most of our quilts were scrap quilts. That year, I visited the Chicago World's Fair with my parents. Because we were quilters, we were especially impressed with the display of prize-winning quilts at the fair. My father took the time to copy the pattern of a quilt that he admired, and later he made cardboard templates that my mother used to piece the quilt. My father even helped with the quilting. To the best of my memory, that quilt was green with very pretty printed fabrics. Our family made many quilts together."

See a PDF from the University of Chicago with the Sears pamphlet featuring an ad for a kit. 
Read more about the contest and the quilt copies here:



Stars with 9 diamonds in the points were far more
common in the 19th century This one is dated 1845.

Dated 1868

Mid-19th century.
There's something for you to ponder.
Why 9 patches instead of 4 patches?
Well, don't ponder it too hard. We don't have an answer.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Ladies' Dream and Chestnut Buds

Ladies' Dream, 1930-1940,
Mary Etta Bach, Philadelphia
 American Museum of Folk Art


Mary Etta Bach followed the pattern sold by Scioto Imhoff Danner
for her Ladies' Dream quilt

Scioto Imhoff Danner stitching on a Ladies' Dream block

This may have been Mrs. Danner's most popular pattern.

Quilters often used her bowknot border and color scheme 

Although Kelly Cline found this top done in pink.

Mrs. Danner noted that the patterns she sold were inspired by antiques. She left no notes or antique version of the Ladies' Dream but there are earlier examples of the pattern with pomegranate or buds rotating around a central shape. She may have been inspired by a similar quilt.

Some similar designs with 8 rotating design units.
Nancy Cabot called it Pumpkin Blossom in the 1930s.

UPDATE: Wilene Smith writes that a pattern like the Ladies Dream #14.843 was published at least three times in Kansas. 1) by Mrs Danner in 1932, 2) by Mary Lee patterns as Pomegranate and Bow Knot Border Design in 1933, 3) by Capper's Weekly April 8, 1933 as Bluebird Nest or Bluebird Home.

I have a few photos of pomegranate shapes in a circle but with 12 units rather than eight. These do not have a number in my Encyclopedia of Applique. I'm writing in #27.9 in my copy, page 100.


Quilt attributed to Grandmother Tarleton in Mecklenberg County
North Carolina. Photo from the North Carolina Project & the Quilt Index.

This North Carolina version has twelve buds or fruits around a central sunburst. The descendant who brought the quilt for documentation did not know much about her mother's family but a little online detective work reveals that quilt was probably made by Rachel Deese Tarleton (1862-1933).




The quilt in the Quilt Index.
Her grave at FindaGrave:

The Benton County, Oregon, Historical Society has another example
with twelve rotating design units. In the center a double ring of hexagons.


Little information was included with the donation, but it looks
to be a late-19th-century quilt by the way the green pomegranates are
fading to a dun color. Note the hexagon ring in the center.

And I'd bet it's Southern---Tennessee???

More hexagons in the center in this
one recently offered on eBay.


 The Quilts of Tennessee project found two similar quilts with hexagonal centers.

This one from the Thomas family, who called it Chestnut Bud.

A Horse Chestnut bud


And this one by Mary Ann Walker Trentham (1857-1920) from Rhea County.
See more about her in Quilts of Tennessee, page 58-9.
Here's some genealogy:


Tim at TimQuilts bought a set of blocks on line
with the same hexagonal ring and star in the center and 12 pomegranates.

Confederate applique quilt made by 
Susan Robb,1861-1862. Chicot County, Arkansas
Collection of the Museum at Texas Tech University

I'm reminded of Susan Robb's Civil War quilt.