Old Connections: Wallpaper and Fabric

Don't you love Syncronicity!

I was browsing old family photos earlier today. Later in the morning I was trying to track down the designer of a contemporary fabric panel in my collection. 

In the process I stumbled across the Blue Hill website and saw their new "York" collection. 

The fabric looked so much like the wall paper behind my parents in a 1955 photo I had just stumbled across earlier this morning that I had to go back and look at the family photo again. 

Although it is not an exact match, it is so very close and was so exciting to find! 

Now I think I'll need to make a wall quilt using this line of fabric to frame the photo of my parents. Yes, one more UFO to add to my list...

Remember....

"You honor the life that has been given you by remembering and telling your stories."

       

(from Robin Moore's "Awakening the Hidden Storyteller")

Yippee! It's sunny today here in the Islands!

PS: Update - I wrote a little more today.

Doll Quilts at Historic Deepwood

Just back from doing a talk for Historic Deepwood in Salem, Oregon, where I also have an exhibit of doll quilts on display. I like using doll and crib quilts to teach an overview of quilt history. They are so much easier to transport!

"The Magic of Small Quilts" 
Exhibit Dates: Oct 4 to Nov 5, 2013

There are two rooms in this lovely restored house with a period theme to each room.  One currently is 20th century and the other 19th century. 

I decided to hang several period doll quilts on panels that could be hung on the wall in each room, in addition to any doll quilts that would be on a doll bed.

The late-19th century panel (above)

And now the quilts individually...

#1 (above) is a Four Patch on Point (16.5 x 13 inches) - blues, browns, white w/ red alternating squares,  ca 1870s-1880s.  It was well a used little and hopefully brought some little  girl a lot of joy in its use. The binding is shattered in one corner & worn on another side.

#2 (above) is a Four Block Redwork Nursery Tales Doll Quilt (16x16 inches) - ca 1890-1910. It contains no batting (inner layer) but nevertheless does contain cross-hatch quilting. It is in excellent condition with the slightest "foxing" around edges on the left side.

#3 is a Log Cabin Doll Quilt (18 x 17.5 inches) in dark blues, burgandy, black, a touch of lavender or pink in each block; some shirtings plus plaid binding. It has a dark seaweed-like patterned fabric backing  but can't find the photo at the moment. There is some damage to the center of the middle block, bottom row. Very nicely made.

The 20th century panel (below)

And now the 20th century quilts individually...

#4 - Butterfly quilts of all sizes were extremely popular in the first half of the 20 century. A nine block (ca late 40s-50s) appliqued butterfly pillow cover / doll quilt. Lots of red fabrics with colorful embroidery around each butterfly as well as blue embroidery used as sashing between each block. 10.5 x 10.5. There is no batting and no quilting. It is open on one side so may have been a doll's pillow cover at one time?

#5 - A favorite theme in my collecting is quilts associated with clowns or the circus in general. I have very fond memories of attending the circus as a child when the choices for public entertainment were far more limited than today. Here is a very small (13 x 8.5 inches) green embroidered Clown on yellow background with green binding (ca 1930-1950). This tiny little gem has lovely quilting.

#6 - The ubiquitous Sunbonnet Sue. I was so thrilled to find such a tiny one! This is backed with chenille. I knew "shabby chic" chenille items had once again become popular in the last decade. This little quilt doesn't look that recently made but it does have many elements of doll and crib quilts made out of repurposed materials in the past decade, such as the use of chenille, rick-rack and buttons. But the appliqued blocks themselves and the sashing are older. It's possible that the rick-rack and buttons were simply added recently to jazz it up a bit.

#7 - Sharon Fulton Pinka wrote in her synopsis of the paper she presented at the 2009 American Quilt Study Group Quilt Seminar, "Quilt block designer William Pinch is virtually unknown outside the Midwest, yet his patterns are found in quilts all over America. This study presents the background of William Bray Pinch and his Rainbow Quilt Block Company of Cleveland, Ohio, with an assessment of his influence in the quilt world. Through analysis of existing quilts, quilt block designs, advertising ephemera, and photographs, and aided by interviews, memorabilia, and correspondence from family members, William Pinch, the self-described “Maker of Pretty Quilt Blocks,” emerges as one of the most influential quilt block designers of the twentieth century."

You can read Sharon's paper in the 2009 edition of Uncoverings, the annual AQSG journal of papers presented at Seminar. Check with your local library or order a copy from AQSG.

Here is another source for Dolly Dimple and the Rainbow Quilt Block Co.

#8 - Teddy Bears.  Click here to read about what I wrote about Teddy Bears in an earlier blog post.

More photos to come of the rest of the exhibit!

Also, if you are on Facebook, check out the Crib & Doll Quilts-Vintage and Antique  page I started some time ago. Meanwhile.....   Keep those needles flying and spread the word about how quilts enrich your life and the life of our communities!

and remember,

~You honor the life that has been given you by remembering and telling your stories.       

(A quote from Robin Moore's "Awakening the Hidden Storyteller")

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: