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Seven Sisters/Seven Stars 3---More Thoughts on Symbolism?

May 14, 2016, 4:00 am
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Quilt documented in the Quilts of Tennessee project.
Photo from the Quilt Index
A unique setting arrangement of the Seven Stars design

By Sarah Jane Myers
Another example from Quilts of Tennessee with an unusual shading.

From the Michigan Project
The pattern has been quite popular with quilters who have
created some original compositions using various sets and colorings.

From the Nebraska Project

From the Connecticut Project, 
set with a string star.

I've been interested in the patchwork pattern for years because
I wondered if it represented any Confederate nostalgia during the last
half of the 19th-century.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/01/3-seven-sisters.html

For the first few months of the Civil War the Confederate flag
had 3 stripes and 7 stars to represent the first seven seceding states

1861 flag at the Wisconsin Veteran's Museum captured
in Charleston, South Carolina

Similar flag raised over Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April, 1861

The seven-star flag was the official flag of the Confederacy from March 4, 1861 through May 21, 1861, after which more seceding states were represented. 

Confederate envelope mailed from Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, December, 1861

See this envelope and others with the same flag at the Brandon Collection of Confederate Patriotics
http://stampauctionnetwork.com/y/y108716.cfm


In  September, 1861 Harper's Weekly published an engraving of a Confederate sympathizer wearing a rebellious apron in Baltimore. 

Seven stars on a flag apron

The seven-star flag lasted for two or three months in a five-year war.

But I can't really find any written links
to the quilt pattern and the Civil War.

Seven Stars Block set with plain white hexagons and red diamonds.


I can hardly find any connections between the image of seven sisters and the Confederate flag.
Here's a poetic link:

A song with music by John Hill Hewitt (1801-1890) and lyrics by E. V. Sharp called Flag of the Sunny South was published perhaps in 1864.

Hail, symbol of the Sunny South!
 Bright Banner of the free! 
Our Southern hearts swell high with joy, 
 When glory points to thee. 
Thy Stars are like the Pleiades; 
 Undim'd by Tyrant's power; 
They'll deck thy Heav'n-dyed field of blue 
 Till freedom's latest hour.

Everyone with a minimal classical education in the mid-19th century would know that the song compared the flag's field to the Pleiades, a constellation named after Greek mythology.

The Pleiades by Elihu Vedder, 1885

The constellation is supposed to represent seven sisters in the night sky.




Favorite Greek Myths By Lilian Stoughton Hyde

The myth of the Seven Sisters has inspired poets, prose writers and geographers. Innumerable geographic features grouped into seven include the chalk cliffs at Seaford in England and seven Mississippi coastal cities, Biloxi to Waveland.

What might the words Seven Sisters have meant to Americans in the years 1860-1900?

During the Civil War the strongest reference North and South may have been a play produced by and starring celebrity Laura Keene. Her theatrical production "The Seven Sisters" was quite popular at the beginning of the War, popular primarily because of low necklines and legs in tights---early burlesque.

Laura Keene by the Brady Studio.
Her play Our American Cousin
was on stage when Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater.

The story line involved seven sisters, daughters of Pluto king of the underworld, visiting New York City (out of the frying pan---into the fire???).

An 1863 ad on the road

The name The Seven Sisters was soon appropriated for an upscale New York brothel.

Lisa Simpson dreams in cliches of elite colleges

The image of Seven Sisters continues useful with more recent symbolism including Seven Sisters as a group of Northeastern women's colleges and a organization of oil-producing nations connected through OPEC.

It would seem that making any connection between the Seven Stars pattern and a Confederate sentiment is going too far. The pattern doesn't seem to have been called that in the 19th century or even the early 20th, and the image of the flag with seven stars, while apparent, is rather minor in wart-time imagery.

Read an early 20th century retelling of the Greek myth of the Seven Sisters and how they were turned into stars in Favorite Greek Myths by Lilian Stoughton Hyde at Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=1TRKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=Lilian+Stoughton+Hyde+seven+sisters&source=bl&ots=XBDA5j7UOU&sig=tPlYn6qSiiSWjDzqIq8VkyYjNbM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZn7G9uPfJAhXC1CYKHaR5CyoQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=Lilian%20Stoughton%20Hyde%20seven%20sisters&f=false
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Quilted & Bound

May 18, 2016, 4:00 am
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Civil War Waves
by Carol Ann

92 Stars!
The stars are from last year's Time Warp series.

A clever set.
The waves are in the sashing.





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Minnie Sherman Fitch's Quilt

May 21, 2016, 4:00 am
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Grand Army Quilt by Minnie Sherman Fitch
About 1885-1910
This is the last weekend to see the crazy quilt with a Civil War theme that is on display at the New York Historical Society.
Threads of Women's History: Recent Needlework Acquisitions includes samplers and three quilts, featuring one by William T. Sherman's eldest daughter Maria Ewing Sherman Fitch. The show closes Sunday May 22, 2016.

 http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/threads-womens-history-recent-needlework-acquisitions

Maria Ewing Sherman (1851-1913) and her grandmother Maria Ewing,
about 1855, Archives of the University of Notre Dame.

Maria (Minnie) Sherman grew up in Saint Louis with her grandparents. Her father's prominence as a Union General during the Civil War turned her into an American princess whose 1874 wedding was celebrated with lavish gifts and much publicity.

Newspaper rendering of Minnie's wedding to Lt. Thomas William Fitch
in Leslie's magazine.

Lieutenant Thomas William Fitch
served in the Union Navy during the Civil War.

The Fitches had seven children and spent much of their marriage in St. Louis. Minnie died in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1913.

The center of the quilt shows veteran's ribbons
and various corps badges.

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Westering Women 5: The Platte River

May 25, 2016, 4:00 am
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Westering Women Block 5: The Platte River by Becky Brown
Becky says she tries to make a story each month with the fabric. "The center is the murky river water, surrounded by the dark muddy banks. . .the trail eventually leads to land where crops are prosperous (the Orchard print). That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." She's using my Old Cambridge Pike prints. 
Whatever “jumping off place” they chose---St. Joseph, Westport, Independence or Kanesville near today’s Council Bluffs, Iowa, travelers along the Oregon Trail finally joined up at the Platte River. The wide river and its bed provided a natural trail to the west.
“We are traveling up Platte river bottom, the north side” wrote Amelia Knight in 1853. “It is a beautiful river about a mile across, full of Islands and sand bars. As far as the eye can reach the road is covered with teams.”
The trails to Portland, Oregon showing the Platte River in red in what
is now the state of Nebraska.

Crossing the Platte River by William Henry Jackson, 1930 (detail)
Jackson photographed the overland trails beginning in the 1870s.  Six decades later when in his 90's he painted recollections and imaginary recreations of the scenes. This one of the Platte may exaggerate it's width. Jackson didn't seem to remember many women on the trail.

The Platte in eastern Nebraska

The river provided not only a roadway but grass for the teams and water for all.

Abigail Jane Scott Duniway, camped near Grand Island, described its many uses.
May 28, 1852
"We drove our cattle on to this island to graze and the men waded across to it and got wood for cooking purposes. The stream where they crossed over to the island was about three feet deep and one hundred yards in width with a quick-sand bottom; the water is thick with sand. We mixed [corn] meal with it and after it settles a while strain it, and it becomes tolerably clear."
Tolerable enough to drink.


 Platte River

Block 5 is an original for the series, adapted from a complex design called Nebraska that appeared about a century ago in the magazine Hearth & Home, which asked readers for a block for each state.

Nebraska is BlockBase #1941
The simpler block drawn from its center represents Nebraska’s great river, the Platte, the focus of the trail to the west coast.

Cutting a 12" Finished Block
A - Cut squares (or strips-see below) 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" .
B - Cut strips 1-1/2" x 6-1/2".
C - Cut 1 square 6-1/2".


You will probably want to strip piece the little nine-patches made of the A squares.

Instead of square A, cut strips 1-1/2" x 10"
Assemble these into two different units


cut them into 1-1/2" strips and stitch them into 9 patches.

Piecing the Block



Five blocks!

Amelia Stewart Knight 1817-1896

Read Amelia Knight's diary at this link:
http://mrdeeteacher.webs.com/39_THE%20DIARY%20AMELIA%20STUART%20KNIGHT%20_13.pdf
Abigail Scott Duniway 1834-1915.
She's probably in her late teens here or early twenties in the early 1860s.

Abigail Scott's is in Volume 5 of Covered Wagon Women, edited by Kenneth L. Holmes and David Duniway. See a preview of the book here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=fo53xWqUkYYC&pg=PA257&dq=platte+river+description+oregon+trail+women&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM-5KvrJ3LAhWDJiYKHWdiADsQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=platte%20river%20description%20oregon%20trail%20women&f=false

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Buying a Chariot Wheel Quilt

May 28, 2016, 4:00 am
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A chariot wheel?
Estimated date 1840-1880

Eliza Suggs was born after the Civil War to parents who had been slaves in North Carolina. In 1906 she published Shadows and Sunshine, a book about her family and the stories she'd heard of life before emancipation.

Most of the tales were quite sad. Her father James disappeared during the Civil War, leaving wife Malinda with four children. Their owner Mr. Suggs removed two of the children to another place so Malinda would not try to escape. He knew she would not leave her children.

After the war James Suggs returned. He'd escaped and joined the Union Army, serving as a private in the 27th Colored Infantry.The family moved west to Illinois and on to Kansas and Nebraska.

 Eliza was born with a bone disease and never grew correctly. She is on the left below with her sisters. She required a good deal of care since she could not walk and her sister Katie in the center was responsible for that care.


One story Eliza recorded tells of her parents' marriage:
"While James was still quite young [he was born in 1831], Mr. Suggs bought a little slave girl, named Malinda Filbrick. In time, James and Malinda came to love each other, and were married while yet in their teens.

Malinda and James Suggs long after the war.

The same pride of heart which had manifested itself in his own stylish appearance, now prompted him to lavish his extra earnings on his young bride."

Ear-drops on an unknown woman,
what we call earrings
"One instance of his extravagant indulgence was the purchase of a $7.00 pair of ear-drops, which doubtless afforded him much gratification until the ill-fated day when they proved too strong a temptation to a party of Union soldiers, who carried them off as spoils. 
"Another outlay of his surplus earnings was in the purchase, for his wife, of a remarkable quilt, made after the pattern known as 'the chariot-wheel.' This was truly a masterpiece of skill, and was highly prized by my mother. It seemed about to share the same fate as the ear-drops and was in the hands of a Union soldier, when the earnest pleadings of my mother prevailed upon the kind-hearted officer in charge to give orders for its restoration."
Soldiers stealing bedding in a detail from George Caleb Bingham's
Order Number 11.

It is interesting to hear that Eliza's father had cash to buy luxuries for his young wife. Eliza did not describe the chariot wheel quilt any further and it may not have survived into her lifetime.



My first thought when I hear of a chariot wheel quilt is a pieced wheel of fortune type such as the purple and green quilt (BlockBase 3388) but those quilts tend to be late in the 19th century.

A pieced wheel about 1900

This 1917 fictional piece described several old Kentucky quilts that were not pictured, including

 "the chariot-wheel pattern, she pieced when she was but 9 years old. I looked at the hundreds of tiny pieces, which comprised the wheels of the chariot..." 

That sounds similar to the picture above, an intricate pieced quilt.

But what would a Chariot Wheel quilt from before the Civil War look like?


Carrie Hall's "Ben Hur's Chariot Wheel" in the collection of the Spencer Museum of Art.

In 1935 Carrie Hall showed an elaborate applique quilt we might call Princess Feather and named it Ben Hur's Chariot Wheel. That allusion to a popular book published in 1880 seems obscure now. Perhaps this was the kind of quilt that James Suggs bought for Malinda.

The quilt shown above in Georgia Quilts: Piecing Together a History was thought by the family to have been made by Granny James in 1845 and captioned Princess Feather or Chariot Wheel. The fabrics and style look post-Civil War but the pattern goes back to the early 19th century.

Quilt called Chariot Wheel from Warman's Vintage Quilts
another late-19th century example.

Read Eliza Suggs's Shadows and Sunshine here at Documenting the American South:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/suggs/suggs.html


Chariot wheel is also the name of a common weaving pattern that looks like the above. Another quilt pattern possibility.

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More Finished Stars in a Time Warp

June 1, 2016, 4:00 am
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I have neglected to show Victoria Carroll's finished 
Stars in a Time Warp

set with triangle blocks of madder shades
and bound with a stripe


And Barbara at Cookie's Creeks

Two good illustrations of why you need yellows and golds in your reproduction stash.

Send pictures when you get these finished.


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St Louis Sanitary Fair quilt in Nebraska

June 4, 2016, 4:00 am
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Silk hexagon quilt in the collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society

Signatures in the white hexagons in the center are now mostly unreadable but one is U.S. Grant.

The ink chemistry has shattered the silk.

The catalog copy:

Mosaic quilt consisting of pieced silk hexagons...There is a central hexagon, all in white silk, that has signatures in ink, including that of U.S. Grant....[Others] one appears to be "Wm (?) Smith, Major General" ne begins "U. S..." and has a"'64"at end. One has "Clint(?) B(..)sk, One has "Geo. (T or J) Nea(?)....This quilt was purchased at a Union sanitary fair in St. Louis during the Civil War. Nellie Grant, daughter of General Ulysses S. Grant, presided over the booth from which it was purchased. General Grant and eighteen others signed the quilt in ink. Credit line Henry Blum, Lincoln, Nebraska and Joseph A. Blum, Des Moines, IA.

Women and quilts
at the Mississippi Valley Fair

About a year ago I wrote a post on photos of that 1864 St. Louis Sanitary Fair, called The Mississippi Valley Fair. The Missouri Historical Museum has a set of stereocards photographed by J.A. Scholten

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/04/quilts-at-mississippi-valley-sanitary.html

In the corner of one of the photographs is a hexagon quilt,
very much like this one.



The family story even mentioned Nelly Grant who attended the fair and sold copies of the photo above.

See more about this remarkable quilt at the Nebraska State Historical Society.
http://nebraskahistory.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/E93A9A45-DE03-4978-B881-436028479847
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Sixty-three Stars

June 8, 2016, 4:00 am
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Jemima Cook's Secession Quilt

June 11, 2016, 4:00 am
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"Secession Quilt" by 
Jemima Ann Thewitts Williamson Cook (1808- ?). 
Fairfield County, South Carolina. 
108" X 108"

In my book Quilts of the Civil War I mention but do not show the above quilt. Showing a whitework quilt is always problematic. What I can see in the above photo is eagle wings on either side of a shield and below those a pair of cornucopia. There are stuffed stars and a good deal of fruit.

Patsy and Myron Orlofsky pictured the quilt in their 1974 book Quilts in America. Their photographs show the back-lit stuffed work, which gives us more information about the design.



The quilt has a knotted fringe around it.
It was sold out of the family in 2003.

From the Orlofsky book
A palmetto tree drawn from the traditional
state seal



The Orlofskys based their information on a newspaper story about the Secession quilt published on November 24, 1916, in the Union Times of Union South Carolina. This U.D.C. Edition (United Daughters of the Confederacy) celebrated the annual convention of the South Carolina organization and printed a long feature on the quilt.

The story below:


"HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA SECESSION QUILT

This quilt was designed and made in 1860 by Mrs. Philip Drury Cook of Fairfield County, S. C. Mrs. Cook was the grandmother of Mrs. John W. Cunningham and Mrs. Jesse Hix, both of Union county. Her maiden name was Jemima Ann Threwitts Williamson. She was born in Virginia, but in early youth came with her parents to Fairfield County. S. C., and was there married to Philips Drury Cook, who in the 60's was Gen. Cook of the Coast Artillery of the C. S. A.

Mrs. Cook was the mother of four children, one son and three daughters. The son, Capt. John W??? Cook of the United States army, was killed in the Mexican war, Of the daughters, the youngest died at the age of nineteen. The oldest married Walter Blount Williamson, the second married Col. Wm. Alston, both of Fairfield county.

While Gen. Cook was in service or the coast, Mrs. Cook carried on the plantation work with the help of an overseer. She spent the year 1860 in designing and making this historical secession quilt, which was given to her oldest grandaughter who is now Mrs. John W. Cunningham of Union county.

Later on she made a quilt of very beautiful floral design, which she gave to her second granddaughter, Mrs. Jesse Hix, of Union, but when Sherman's men burned the Alston home in Fairfield they cut up this quilt and used it for saddle blankets Mrs. Jesse Hix, who lived with her grandmother when a very little girl says she remembers that her grand mother put the quilt into the frame then rolled a big table under it and so sketched the entire design, and she remembers what a long, long time "Grandmother was making on it and how often the big frame had to be pushed to one side to make way for some other work." 

The quilt is three yards square, and is made of fine white cambric, with very thin wadding and quilted in tiny stitches to form the outlines. The cotton picked from the seed by hand and bleached to snowy whiteness and carded by hand was stuffed with a bodkin through the sheer thin lining to raise the figures. This gives it a beautiful appearance and makes it really a work of art.

The design is historical and original. The centre represents an eagle whose outspread wings rest upon the inverted horns of two cornucopias from which are falling fruits and flowers. From the beak of the eagle floats a streamer hearing the motto "E pluribus unum." Upon the baclk of the eagle stands the Goddess of Liberty bearing a flag staff in her right hand, a sheaf in her left. Back of the Goddess to the right of the flag staff and just above the starry background is the word "Secession", beneath which is the date 1860. Or the left of the Goddess is the name ,Yamey, [Yancey?] while the ten letters in the name Washington form an arch over her head. Beneath this picture is the name P. D. Cook, the husband of the designer. In the beautiful border of flowers and beadinggs [?] that surrounds this centrepiece four arches are inserted, each bearing the name of the four governors belonging to the Nullification Period b1830-1837 Above the Goddess is "Butler,' below "Hamilton," to the right "McDuffie," to the left "Hayne." Around all this is a wide band of grapes and roses and in each corner two large cornucopias filled with fruit and flowers. Midway on each of the four sides is the State emblem, the Palmetto tree and shields, and on each shield there are two cunning little figures.

On the approach of Sherman's army this quilt was packed in a box with other family treasures and buried deep in the earth. When taken up it was badly stained and discolored, and repeated washings were necessary. This, no doubt, has made the letters and figures less distinct. It was on exhibition at the Charleston Exhibition in the Union county exhibit in 1902 as the following clipping from The News and Courier will prove:

"Union is without a doubt ahead in historical exhibits; the beautiful handmade quilt surpasses anything in design and workmanship on exhibition." Exposition Committee on Awards.

Mrs. Cook also made a dress for herself out of woolen threads ravelled from scraps of black cloth, carded and recarded by hand with white home-grown wool and woven on a hand loom into a beautiful gray cloth. They trimmed it with rows and rows of tiny buttons cut out by hand from a gourd and covered with black silk. After the close of the war when the women of Columbia got up a bazaar for the benefit of the disabled Confederate soldiers, Mrs. Cook attended this bazaar and wore this dress. It attracted much attention and Mrs. Cook at once donated it to the bazaar. It was sold for $50.00 in gold and the entire amount given to the fund for the soldiers."

From Chronicling America, the Library of Congress newspaper site

See the newspaper here at the Library of Congress site:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93067853/1916-11-24/ed-2/seq-18/

And read the text here:

http://14.140.164.243/lccn/sn93067853/1916-11-24/ed-1/seq-6/ocr/
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Block 3 x 16

June 15, 2016, 4:00 am
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Block 3 from Westering Women
The Sweet Gum Leaf is one of my favorites.

You may recognize your block in this collage
I did of pictures from our Flickr group.

A  grid of 4x4 would make a 48" quilt.
Just enough applique to keep you entertained
during baseball season.

And it gives me an excuse to show you this mid 19th century version from the Pat L. Nickols
collection at the Mingei Museum.

http://www.mingei.org/collection/signature-quilt-pieced-new-garden-friendship/


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Amanda Spering's Irish Chain Quilt

June 18, 2016, 4:00 am
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In my paper files of Civil War quilts I have a picture from the magazine Traditional Quiltworks #82 in 2002.
The caption:
"The Civil War Quilt (100" Square) is an Irish Chain made in the colors of the Union flag. Amanda Saurman Spering worked on this quilt in 1861 and 1862. While reading chronological events, we are plunged into the emotions provoked by the escalating war. Amanda's great granddaughter presently owns the quilt."

Amanda inked a sort of a journal on this quilt.
In the center:
"The Quilt is intended as a memento of the present times of civil strife and as such it has been made a brief record of the events of the War...February 22, 1862."
The Spering quilt was shown in a 1991 exhibit Made to Remember: American Commemorative Quilts when museum Spokesperson Lucinda Laird was interviewed: "One of the most unusual quilts is one that was made by Amanda Spering of Philadelphia, which was completed in 1862....It is a huge 102-by-102-inch quilt with 60 blocks. It chronicles the events from Lincoln's election in 1860 to December 1861."



Amanda Saurman Spering (1836-1922)
A portrait from Traditional Quiltworks

The quilt is also pictured in the 1991 exhibit catalog Made to Remember: American Commemorative Quilts.


The Philadelphia Sperings were in the dry goods business.

A token from the Spering Good & Co,
Wholesale Dry Goods. No 158 Market St.
Philad

Corner of 6th and Market in 1859



Amanda's diary quilt is a popular pattern we'd call Irish Chain. It's two alternating blocks, one a checkerboard of 25 squares; the other with squares in the corners. She included a few patriotic symbols and many inked words. 

I found an article in the Philadelphia North American, September 2, 1899 that describes the quilt in detail.
"Perhaps the most valued relic of the civil war in this city is possessed by Mrs. Samuel Spering of 2226 Oxford Street...Two thousand patches placed in chain-link pattern....At the time this novel historical work was begun indelible ink was unknown [Not true]  and to inscribe each event in silk with a needle was a greater task than Mrs. Spering cared to begin...."

So she made her own ink.

"The last time this valued relic was displayed was in the Woman's Building at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. At that time it attracted wide attention, but its owner has declined to place it on exhibition since."

The Woman's Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia




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Wendy's Potholder Stars Headed for AQSG Auction

June 22, 2016, 4:00 am
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Stars in a Time Warp---
6" Stars in period prints



Wendy at the Constant Quilter has been turning her stars
into potholder blocks,

which means she is binding and finishing out each block as a unit
and then joining the blocks.

This method was a common technique used for 
Civil War soldiers' quilts in New England.

She made two sets of period stars in our 2015 Quilt Along.

She intends to get the potholder version finished in time to donate it to the fund-raising auction at the American Quilt Study Group's annual meeting in Tempe, Arizona, in September.

Check it out here:
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/seminar.asp

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Graveyard Quilts for Mourning

June 25, 2016, 4:00 am
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Quilt by Elizabeth Roseberry Mitchell (1799-1857)
Collection of the Kentucky Historical Society,
Donated in 1959 by her granddaughter Nina Aura Mitchell Biggs (1866-1968), 
a local historian and writer.

I've been asked if the Kentucky Graveyard quilt would be an appropriate design for a Civil War reproduction quilt. I shall ramble on here.

47 pieced stars and 20 coffins in the Kentucky Historical Society's quilt.

http://kyhistory.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/90C9CB5A-6327-42F0-8085-383648601656

This famous mourning quilt is unusual but not unique. For years Elizabeth Roseberry Mitchell's medallion quilt picturing a cemetery and coffins in the center was described as one of a kind. But it isn't. There are two of a kind.

One of my theories is that people rarely make an amazing quilt like this out of the blue.There are sources and inspiration, possibly earlier and/or later quilts with related ideas.

In the case of Elizabeth Mitchell there are two related quilts:


'
The graveyard in the center of the second Mitchell family quilt
(thought to have been made earlier than the other)
with two coffins, 45 stars and the words
"Mitchell School Clothes"

Quilt historian Linda Otto Lipsett found another quilt in the collection of the Highlands Museum and Discovery Center in Ashland, Kentucky. Another Biggs descendant had donated that quilt in the 1980s, but the link had not been established by the museums.
\
A mural showing the diagram of the second Mitchell quilt, painted in 2008 by 
Denise Spaulding, Melanie Osborne, Gary Preston and 
ABC Quilt Alley on the flood wall in Ashland, Kentucky, .

The mural artists took some liberties, according to the Herald-Dispatch:
"That quilt is 172 years old and it's really fragile, almost crumbling. So now people can see what it would look like and it looks really good. They reproduced it like it would have looked if it was new. It was as close as we could get to being the real quilt."
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/features_entertainment/quilt-block-adds-a-little-more-history-to-ashland-s/article_83e25840-0c9d-52ab-90d2-93e6488e8cd5.html


The actual quilt top shows the border of V shapes and the cemetery path
of dog-tooth applique along the bottom border.


Family tradition is that Elizabeth Mitchell began the first quilt after she lost two-year-old John in 1836 and buried him in Monroe County, Ohio. Dissatisfied she began a second, similar version, perhaps when a second son died in 1843 at the age of 19. She made coffins for herself and other family members and basted them in the border. When they died she moved their coffins to the central graveyard. When she died in 1857 her daughter Elizabeth (1830-1867) moved Mother's coffin to the center.

The second version is quilted while the first is a top. 

The top on the left looks like it has a blue paisley fabric in the alternating squares, but this is just a glare in the photo. Both quilts seem to be set with the same brown print.


Kentucky Historical Society quilt.
The green calico binding seems in better shape than the rest of the quilt.

Linda Otto Lipsett with the Kentucky Historical Society's quilt.

Coffin labeled "Father" in a photo from the Quilt Index.
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1A-39-23A

How old are the quilts? Much of the online history dating them to the 1830s seems to be adapted from a five-page typed paper that Nina Biggs donated with the quilt to the Kentucky Historical Society. That quilt is pictured on the Quilt Index where the Kentucky Quilt Project dated it as 1850-1875. If so, it is the right era for a Civil War mourning quilt,although there seems to be no Civil War symbolism in the original pair. Certainly it is an effective and authentic mid-19th-century mourning image.

Silk embroidered, framed memorial for a man who died in 1833.
from Stephen and Carol Huber's online shop
http://antiquesamplers.com/memorial/index.html


See Lipsett's 1995 book Elizabeth Roseberry Mitchell's 
Graveyard Quilt: An American Pioneer Saga, book here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~halsteadpub/elizab.html

Detail of Polly Mello's interpretation of the 
Kentucky Historical Society's quilt.

Donna in SW Pennsylvania's interpretation.

Detail of a copy by Hollis Taylor.

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Westering Women 6: Hill and Hollow

June 29, 2016, 4:00 am
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Block 6 
Hill and Hollow by Becky Brown
"July 27, 1857. Traveled the distance of about two and a half miles over sand hills the most terrible I ever beheld. Encamped on the banks of the Platt river for dinner.
August 2 1857.Our camping place for dinner was Ash hollow a splendid and romantic place."
Sarah Mousley

As we follow the Westering Women across the American continent we see the landscape change in Nebraska's panhandle. Ash Hollow Park is the red arrow on this N.P.R. map that shows
the dominant tribes along the trail.

After weeks of uneventful days following the Platte River, travelers came upon a series of landmarks. Windlass Hill, a formidable descent, was the first. Teams and wagons were unhitched and inched down the hill. 

Ruts and swales are still visible near Windlass Hill and 
California Hill on the Platte. 

Keturah Belknap wrote in 1848 that the men “were lifting the wheels to ease them down the steps for it was solid rock steps from six inches to two feet apart so it took all day but we all got thru without accident.”


"Bloomer Costume Put to a Severe Test"
Wadsworth's 1858 guide pictures a wagon careening downhill with
a woman holding on behind. 

Once the hill had been navigated immigrants rested in Ash Hollow, some staying a few days to enjoy the water, the best on the journey. After weeks of sifting the mud out of Missouri and Platte River water, spring water was a delight.

The hill and hollow are well marked in a Nebraska park near Highway 26 and Llewellyn. This is a great place to see ruts left by the wagons.

Hill and Hollow


The Nancy Cabot column in the Chicago Tribune published this classic block and named it Hill and Hollow in 1937 (BlockBase #1276), but it's divided by 10 so would make a poor 12" block.
I changed the proportions---leaving a lot of triangles in there---many hills and hollows still to cross from Ash Hollow to the Pacific.


Cutting a 12" Block
A - Cut 20 squares 2-7/8". Cut each in half with a diagonal line to make 2 triangles. You need 40 small triangles.


B - Cut 4 squares 4-7/8". Cut each in half with a diagonal line to make 2 triangles. You need 8 large triangles.


Bloomers on the Trails

The unfortunate woman pictured in Wadsworth's guide is wearing trousers under her skirt, but is it a long skirt or a more practical short skirt?

Kenneth L. Holmes, editor of the Covered Wagon Women series, noted in Volume 5 about trips in 1852 that he saw a pattern of women adopting the "Bloomer Costume," trousers. Seventeen-year-old Eliza Ann McAuley:
"My sister and I wear short dresses and bloomers..."

Eliza Ann McAuley [Egbert] (1835-1919) at the time of her 
California marriage, 1854

Dr. Mary E. Walker in bloomer costume soon
after the Civil War. One could borrow a 
pair of pants and trim off a ragged skirt...

making a more functional costume as worn by these female gold seekers.


Becky Wants to Know:
"Are we there yet? Well I guess we are half-way!"

Keturah Belknap about 1910,
over fifty years after her western journey.

See Keturah Belknap's journal in volume 1 of Covered Wagon Women and Sarah Mousley's in Volume 7.
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Marin City Negro History Club's Portrait Quilts

July 2, 2016, 4:00 am
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During the early 1950s women in Marin County, California celebrated African-American history by making a pair of large quilts portraying Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

Harriet Tubman
Ben Irvin and the Negro History Club of Marin City and Sausalito, 1951
96" x 120"
Robert Woodruff Library Collection.

Ben Irvin, a San Francisco architect and later head of the Sausalito Arts Center, drew the designs. The first was Harriet Tubman. 

 1885 photograph of Tubman 


Members of the Negro History Club of Marin City and Sausalito stitched Irwin's ideas into a wall hanging that was 8 by 10 feet. Some of the artists: Birdie Smith, Martha Johnson, Essie McKee, Betty DePrado, Catherine Holland, Margaret and Billie Jo Fuslier, Bernice Vissman, Detia Wright, Florence Shandeling, and Claudia Beagerie.

Marin City was a relatively new place in 1950, a shipyard community that grew up in World War II just north of San Francisco. After the boom days people continued to live in government housing in an ethnically mixed community. 


Jet Magazine published a photo of the Tubman quilt in 1952, noting it was entered in the California State Fair.
"The bed cover is the handiwork of an interracial women's group....The first of a series of embroidered works showing prominent Negro leaders."

Frederick Douglass
Ben Irvin and the Negro History Club of Marin City and Sausalito, 1953
96" x 120"
Robert Woodruff Library Collection.

The group's second quilt, also drawn by Irvin, showed Frederick Douglass addressing an Anti-Slavery Society Convention in Nantuckett in 1841.




Anna Murray Douglass listens to her husband on the left and Abolitionist newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison is at right.

Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman (1903-1996)

Sue Bailey Thurman from San Francisco showed the quilts around the country in the 1950s. They were exhibited in the 1970s in Marin County and postcards made of them. I can remember what an inspiration they were to textile artists using cloth to create pictorial images. 

Sue Bailey Thurman was an author, editor and teacher interested in Black history.  She wrote newspaper articles including  "Pioneers of Negro Origin in California" and married theologian Howard Thurman.

She donated both quilts to Emory University's Robert Woodruff Library in Atlanta. 
Read more about the quilts here:
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Gladi Wins a Prize!

July 6, 2016, 4:00 am
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Lincoln Memorial Quilt from the Massachusetts Project

July 9, 2016, 4:00 am
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"In Memory of Abraham Lincoln"

"President of the U. States"

"Assassinated at Washington
April 12th 1865"

The Massachusetts project has included this photo of a Civil War memorial quilt at the Quilt Index.
Little seems to be known about it. It was in a private collection at the time it was documented, inherited from mother.

The central block has a dedication
"To G.A.N.
From His Friends"

Embroidered blocks include names and initials with places and regiment numbers.

The block is a traditional album variation, placed on point.
From the photos the fabrics look to be about 1870-1890.


See it at this link:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1D-FC-9FB

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Meanwhile at Another Blog

July 13, 2016, 4:00 am
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4 Janet Perkins

8 Jeanne at Spiral

Over on my Material Culture blog we are making hexies....

Barbara S at Gravestones
Above and Below

Check the Morris Hexathon every Saturday for a free Block of the Week
QuiltAlong.
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/

Some blocks are turning out traditional....


Some quite Morris-y

Above and below Nancy S.


Ilyse's #7


Lin at StVictorQuilts

Some not

Paula's #7
Some fussy cut

Bettina's #5

Dustin's #6

Dorry at ColvinKiwi - #4
Stitchers are using a lot of yellow

Lin's #7 at StVictorQuilts

Cheryl's #8

Yellow is always a good thing.

And I think Denniele is getting a handle on Christmas
with a seasonal I Spy quilt for some lucky grandchild.

Becky's #9

It's not to late to catch up. We just did Block #10 on Saturday.
There are 16 blocks to go---till Fall.
Here's a Pinterest Page with all the links:
https://www.pinterest.com/materialculture/morris-hexathon-posts/

Dustin's #4

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Reunion Ribbon Quilts

July 16, 2016, 4:00 am
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You couldn't have a Civil War Reunion without souvenir ribbons.

 113th Illinois Reunion in Palatine, Illinois

Many were saved in crazy quilts

This spectacular example is from the collection of 
Dr. Roy Egan of Pittsburgh.

A Pennsylvania Keystone with Pennsylvania ribbons

Connecticut Woman's Relief Corps
Connecticut State Library

The block at the top of the page contains women's ribbons.

Block in the shape of the symbol of the 
Woman's Relief Corps

One can guess that the quilt was made from ribbons
collected at various reunions---perhaps by one very well-traveled person
or a group.

The Witcher Brothers, Texas

But what about these quilts made from repeats of the same ribbon?

Quilt top made from 1889 ribbons from
a G.A.R, Reunion in Kearney, Nebraska



Made for Elijah Henry Clay Clavins of the 14th Indiana Volunteer Regiment.
Indiana Historical Society


Could someone have ordered a supply of souvenir
ribbons and been left with excess inventory?


See Maggie Frentz's quilt made of repeats of political ribbons at this post:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/04/maggie-frentzs-flag-quilt.html

Quilt with lace edge pieced of multiple James Garfield and Winfield Hancock ribbons
after the 1880 campaign. They were rivals. Garfield won.
Detail of a similar quilt made with Grover Cleveland and James Blaine
ribbons (1884 campaign). The maker had more winner than loser ribbons.


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Vermont Quilt Festival Winners: More Reproduction Quilts

July 20, 2016, 4:00 am
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Marsha Malloy of Massachusetts
won first prize for Best Use of Reproduction Fabrics
at the June Vermont Quilt Festival.

And Theresa Tiburzi of Maryland won the Founder's Award
for her reproduction of  the quilt below in the collection
of the Shelburne Museum.


I bet she used the Hoopla pattern:
https://hooplapatterns.danemcoweb.com/shop/product/peony-quilt-pattern/

Congratulations to the winners!
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