Baby Faces on Quilts UPDATE

Update:  August 5, 2013

Yippee! Fellow quilt historian Rosie Werner just sent me a copy of an ad for the Baby Faces quilt I shared recently!  You can see the whole quilt by clicking here.

Rosie wrote: I found the pattern for this in an Alice Brooks booklet "Collection of Needlecraft masterpieces" from around 1958. 

By the way, you must check out Rosie's website. She is doing the most phenomenal job of researching and documenting quilt patterns and kits for babies and young children. Visit her website by clicking here.  You do have to pay a fee to join but once you pay that initial fee, the pdf files she has created of her research are free for downloading. These are not the actual pattern pieces. These are the ads about the patterns and who produced and distributed them, if known.

Here is one example. Click to enlarge:

Appliqued Girls in Bonnets and Scotty Dogs

I wrote the following for an exhibit I put together of some of my crib quilts in 2010. Eventually I'll add some more history to the Sunbonnet motif as I discover it. A great source for the history of what we have come to call the Sunbonnet Sue pattern is Dolores Hinson's 1983 "The Sunbonnet Family of Quilt Patterns."  If you would like to add more research sources, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog.

Scotties (and West Highland Whites) were very popular in the USA from the 1920s through the 1950s. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous Scottie (Fala) brought the breed to the public’s attention once more but did not create the Scottie sensation in the USA to begin with.

Girls in bonnets were first popularized in 1878 by the publication of Kate Greenway first illustrated book. In 1884 the first knock-off Kate Greenway illustrations were published for needlework. Bertha Corbett self-published her first illustrated storybook The Sunbonnet Babies in 1900. Bernhardt Wall, another early 20th century artist, also got into the act and created his own distinctive bonneted little girls plus Overall Sam. Over the last century both Corbett’s and Wall’s simplified designs have been adapted for Redwork embroidery. Sunbonnet embroidery patters were certainly in the Ladies Art Catalogue (St. Louis, MO) by 1910.

But when did the popular Sunbonnet Sue applique patterns appear?

The earliest I have found is Marie Webster's appliqued Sunbonnet Lassies. It appeared in the pages of the Ladies Home Journal in August 1912. Were there any earlier renditions of SBS in applique published in a popular magazine? When did it take on the name, Sunbonnet Sue instead of Sunbonnet Lassies?

Sunbonnet Sue as an appliquéd figure really took off in the early 1930s and remained very popular through the 1960s. In the 1930s outline black embroidery was often added around appliquéd figures.

This particular crib quilt is not as finely made as most you will see from the 1930s and is rather crudely embroidered around the appliqué. It is a very thick quilt yet hand quilted. It is the first Sunbonnet Sue quilt I have personally seen with the Scottie dog added.

Ancient Quilt Designs From Ephesus

I see design everywhere but sense my eye is so "accustomed" to my own culture, it is easier for me to notice designs in other cultures. Do you find that true too?  I seem to have to look harder at my own culture.

Some of the quilts of the new "Modern Quilt" movement rather remind me of looking down a street in Manhattan. Take a look here and see if you don't see some great modern abstract quilt design possibilities.

I saw design possibilities everywhere I went in the Mediterranean on a textile study tour I did with Deb Roberts in 2008. It was almost sensory overload.

Here are just a few from the ancient city of Ephesus that is over 2,000 years old. You can no longer reach the ancient city by water. Why?  Because over the centuries the river carried so much silt down from the hills that it built up a new land mass and a new city eventually had to built on the "new" coastline.

Baby Faces on Quilts

Here is a quilt in my collection that I finally photographed today. I am guessing the date somewhere between 1940 and 1955.

It measures 31x37. Each block is 8x9.5.

If anyone has seen this pattern and knows the source, please let me know.

This is beautifully hand embroidered and also beautifully machine quilted. Someone was a real expert!

Our latest grandson could have been the model for the one above!

After his very recent first haircut....

Update:  August 5, 2013

Yippee! Fellow quilt historian Rosie Werner just sent me a copy of an ad for this pattern! She wrote: I found the pattern for this in an Alice Brooks booklet "Collection of Needlecraft masterpieces" from around 1958. 

By the way, you must check out Rosie's website. She is doing the most phenomenal job of researching and documenting quilt patterns and kits for babies and young children. Visit her website by clicking here.  You do have to pay a fee to join but once you pay that initial fee, the pdf files she has created of her research are free for downloading. These are not the actual pattern pieces. These are the ads about the patterns and who produced and distributed them, if known.

Here is one example: