Civil War Quilts

Descendants of Caroline Boston

sent me pictures of this autograph quilt.

It's covered with names of veterans and their Civil War units but no date.

In the center square is their great-great grandmother's name...

"Caroline Boston Benton Barack"

Caroline Gerlach Boston and James Boston, perhaps in the 1890s

Caroline's husband's name is opposite hers in the center block. The fabric is all solids--whether cotton or wool or a combination of fibers we haven't determined, although they think it may be all cotton.

"Jas. Boston.

Co. H.53.Ill.I

Company F, 53rd Illinois Infantry"

The family has some clues to the meaning of this quilt. They are well aware that Caroline served as a Civil War nurse at St. Louis's Benton Barracks Hospital.

The Benton Barracks Hospital was the largest hospital in the west.

"Caroline Boston

U.S. Army

Nurse

Benton

Barracks

Hospital

Aged

88Y. 1M 3D."

Her nursing service was important enough that she is remembered as a U.S. Army Nurse on

her tombstone, erected after her death in 1922.

Could the quilt have been made during the Civil War and signed by patients at the hospital?

My estimate based on the style, the quilt pattern, the embroidery etc. is: No, it's not a mid-19th-century quilt but a late-19th or early-20th century quilt.

The claret-colored back is very much like the type you see on

crazy quilts after 1885 or so. Perhaps a polished cotton in a new

synthetic red shade.

The linear embroidery is a good clue to after 1880. If it were 1860

there would be cross-stitching or inking for the names.

A typical mid-19th century signature in ink handwriting

Quilt dated 1899 with linear embroidery.

The thread in the date has faded to white.

Embroidered lettering that traces handwriting is a post-1880 style.

Quilt dated 1896, similar solid colors, fabrics,

similar use of names and embroidery style.

Quilt made of wools and cottons dated 1912

My first guess was that it was made and presented to Caroline and James Boston close to 1900,

perhaps at a hospital reunion. The men's units come from a variety of places so it's not just an Illinois reunion or a Missouri reunion.

The family history corrects me. Caroline made it to recall her patients and her service. Her great-great grandson writes:

"Caroline Boston served as a nurse in Ward E at Benton Barracks. We are currently researching some of the names on the quilt and, so far, it seems likely that they may have been patients at Benton Barracks. Caroline possibly kept records of her patients in Ward E and later in life made this quilt as a family project. It was passed down from mother to daughter, etc.
The time frame from post 1880 – pre 1920 seems entirely plausible....Her family resided in Smith Center, Kansas, during this time."

More on Caroline Boston and the nurses at the Benton Barracks next week.

See another quilt related to a reunion at this post:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/08/civil-war-union-veterans-fundraiser.html

Reproduction star by Bettina Havig

Reproduction star by Becky Brown

We're going back in time to the earliest American patchwork, so we will be spending the summer months discussing fabrics found in quilts before the 1840s.

Antique star block, collection of Old Sturbridge Village

Early 19th century

The most distinctive of the early prints are chintzes, a style defined in 1663 by English diarist Samuel Pepys. He recorded a shopping trip to buy his wife "a chintz, that is, a painted Indian calico, for to line her study."

Detail of the Copp Quilt about 1800,

Collection of the Smithsonian Institution

Dark-ground chintz squares alternate with star blocks of chintz scraps.

To Frances Trollope, an Englishwoman traveling in America in 1828, chintz meant "the material of a curtain" and the definition remains the same. Chintz generally means a cotton furnishing fabric, used for drapes, slipcovers and upholstery.

White-ground chintz with border print from a garment, 18th century

The figures in the earliest prints are block-printed and hand-painted. This

is the type of Indian chintz that became fashionable with Europeans

when cotton became a pillar of world trade.

We'll begin with white-ground chintzes, which were used for furnishing fabrics but also quite popular for clothing in the 18th- and early-19th-centuries.

Madame Pompadour by François-Hubert Drouai,

1763-4

The mistress of the King of France

wears an elaborate cotton dress to do her needlework.

Detail of Madame's dress.

Drouai could paint!

Early chintz imports were wood-block printed to Indian taste with light figures on dark-colored backgrounds, a remarkable novelty to Europeans. Novelty soon wore off, however, and sales dropped. By the mid-1600s English middlemen began influencing Indian design by sending sample patterns and requesting changes in traditional figures and coloring. Letters in trading company records advised artists to substitute white backgrounds for "sad red grounds"

Gown from Colonial Williamsburg collection, 1780

Cotton print worn over quilted silk petticoat

The popularity of imported cotton prints alarmed established producers of silk and wools who demanded trade protection. In 1700 Parliament prohibited the English from importing and wearing foreign prints. French chintz lovers fared no better with bans on French and foreign chintzes in effect from 1686 to 1759, laws flouted by the fashionable.

The Netherlands was one of the few European countries permitting free trade in chintzes.

Man's garments in large-scale chintzes

Collection: Centraal Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands

The Dutch wore amazing garments that were illegal in other countries.

Woman's jacket

Collection of the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands

Antique star quilt alternating with a nine-patch.

Years ago Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts

published this fabulous quilt with the caption

that it was from Edisto Island, South Carolina.

Detail of Hephzibah Jenkins Townsend's small quilt.

Collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Hephzibah made this quilt on Edisto Island too. White ground chintz seems to have been a favorite with Carolina quilters.

See a detail here:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556509

Quilt from the Lee Family of Charleston,

about 1830

Charleston Museum

See more about his South Carolina quilt in the collection of the Charleston Museum at this post

http://charlestonmuseum.tumblr.com/post/47536194786

Reproductions

Reproduction star by Becky Brown.

Look for large scale, multi-colored florals.

Above, a vintage dress with a similar reproduction.

Dawn at Collector with a Needle used Dutch chintz repros

from Den Haan

Den Haan's Dutch prints

Dutch Delight by Maureen Crawford

I bet she used the Dutch repros.

Mary Koval with her current Palampore collection

Two by Nancy Gere

Catherine's Courtyard by Betsy Chutchian
White-ground and dark-ground chintzes

Kathy Hall's Southcott quilt panel has

a white ground chintz with a Chinoiserie design,

just like the original quilt at the Winterthur Museum

I occasionally reproduce these early 19th century chintzes.

Above and below is a print from Lately Arrived from London

At top the document print; the brighter is the repro.

I think Becky used this print in her star at the top of the page.

It looks like Jan Hutchinson used the tan version for the border on this medallion.

http://thesecretlifeofmrsmeatloaf.blogspot.com/2012/09/thank-you-madame-president.html

Here's a stripe Terry Thompson and I did

for Moda in a long-ago line named Coral Gardens.

A current repro from French General

Better buy the bolt!

Collections for a Cause: Love

India Chintz from Windham

You may have some of this Kaye England print from

Enduring Grace

Georgann Eglinski's center star from her reproduction quilt

called Thank You, Robert Bishop!

Georgann used many white-ground chintzes.

She gave the quilt that name because she found

the original in a book by Robert Bishop.

And don't forget to look at decorator fabrics. You'll find

a lot of accurate chintz repros in these heavier furnishing materials.

If the green seems too bright, cut around it.

What to do with your Stack of Stars?

Make a chintz medallion.

Maryland, Math and A Magnifying Glass by Sylvia Jennings Galbraith

Sylvia interpreted an early Maryland quilt for an AQSG Quilt Study of

quilts made before 1840.

Lori Smith's pattern Reminiscence

Mariann Simmons for the Virginia Quilt Museum

Di Ford, Phebe reproduction

Bobbi Finley and Carol Gilham Jones

One More Thing About Chintz

Glazed neat stripe in an early-19th-century British hexagon

We may think of chintz as a glazed fabric because we can buy plain chintz, a shiny cotton with no print at all. Traditionally chintz was finished with a glaze or not. In the past the surfaces were polished with wax, resin or starch, treatment that added weight, stiffness and elegance. The shine also repelled stains and dirt, but was liable to wash away.

Glazed chintz stripe for furnishings, end of the 20th century

Mills use other chemicals to obtain a shiny surface today.

Don't focus on the glaze. Chintz is best defined as a large-scale furnishing print.

Late-18th-century chintz

Read more about white-ground chintzes at this post:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/08/every-early-repro-collection-needs.html
And pages 10-12 in America's Printed Fabrics deal with chintzes.

Caroline H. Gerlach Boston (1833 -1922)

Last week I did a post on this Memorial quilt, which has been passed

from mother to daughter over five generations of Caroline Boston's family.

Caroline was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, to German immigrants David C. Gerlach and Sabella Wilhelmina Uber. The family moved to Illinois during her childhood. In 1854 she married James Boston in Geneva, Illinois. James, born in Ohio, had lived in Indiana before moving west to Illinois.

Caroline and James's fourth boy, Ellsworth Boston, was born on July 1, 1861, a little over a month after the country was stunned by the death of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, shot while removing a Confederate flag waving over Alexandria, Virginia.

Death of Col. Ellsworth, a Currier & Ives print.

The martyr to the Union cause is literally larger than life here.

The family's commemoration of the first Union hero of the Civil War tells us something about the Bostons' loyalties.

Caroline embroidered husband James's name and company in the

center of her quilt.

From James's obituary:

"In January 1862, the deceased answered the call of his country, and enlisted in company F, 53rd Illinois volunteers, and saw some extremely hard fighting and many hardships. He was badly wounded in the battle of Hatchie."

The Battle of Hatchie River, also called Mattamora or Davis Bridge, took place in Tennessee and Mississippi on October 5, 1862. James, shot in the abdomen by a musket ball, was initially treated in makeshift hospitals in the town of Bolivar, Tennessee, then transferred to the U.S. General Hospital at St. Louis's Benton Barracks.

Wisconsin troops in front of the Benton Barracks,

the largest hospital in the west during the Civil War.

"All through that summer (1863) the hospitals of St. Louis were crowded to overflowing. From one thousand to fifteen hundred were lying in Benton Barracks alone." Women's Work in the Civil War, 1867

During his hospitalization Caroline applied to be a nurse. She left the boys with relatives and moved to St. Louis.

"Men, wounded in every conceivable manner, were frequently arriving from the battle-fields [an experience that] so many brave women, fresh from the quiet and happy scenes of their peaceful homes, have been willing to subject themselves for the sake of humanity."

The hospital building was built as an open amphitheater, which in the spring of 1863 had been "enclosed; provided with windows, floored, partitioned, divided into wards, thoroughly whitewashed, furnished with iron bedsteads and good beds, and converted into one of the largest, most thoroughly ventilated and best hospitals in the United States, capable of accommodating two thousand five hundred patients.”

A sunny view of a ward in Memphis

James's recovery was slow. After a few months he was classified as unfit for military service and apparently volunteered to join the Invalid Corps, serving at the Barracks Hospital with his wife.

Emily Elizabeth Parsons (1824-1880)

Caroline's supervisor was Emily Parsons, Superintendent of Female Nurses, who'd trained as a nurse at the beginning of the war. Parson's letters to her mother were published in 1880 as Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons.

After Vicksburg in the summer of 1863:

"The amount of wounded is already very great, by and by they will be coming up the river....I have to keep careful watch over every one of the nurses, as I am responsible for them."

Parsons's letters give us a glimpse of the Bostons' life at the hospital, although she didn't mention either by name.

"A new nurse came to-day, a lady about forty.

Her husband is off engineering, or something like it,

and she wanted to do something for the soldiers...."

After the bloody year of 1863, the war in the west quieted enough that the Benton Barracks changed uses, becoming a refuge for escaped slaves, free blacks and convalescent African-American troops.

Photograph by Enoch Long

Liljenquist Collection at the Library of Congress

Another glimpse of life at the Benton Barracks

is provided by a series of portraits of men

photographed in a painted backdrop there.

Same backdrop

These pictures of convalescing soldiers must have reassured

families back home.

The painting behind the unknown soldier is signed "Evans Artist."

The backdrop is similar; the photo is flipped over.

James Boston (1834-1924) after the War

wearing his uniform and a GAR veteran's ribbon.

War records describe him as

5’ 11 ½” tall with gray eyes and dark hair

In April, 1864, the Bostons were discharged from their hospital duties. A few months later they homesteaded land in Pawnee County, Nebraska, where their first daughter Hattie was born that summer.

Read Emily Parsons's Memoir of nursing life here:

https://archive.org/details/memoirofemilyeli00parsiala

Stationery from the Benton Barracks

If you think you might have an ancestor on Caroline's quilt leave a comment with his name (Caroline's is the only female name on her quilt) and her family will check for you.

Reproduction star with a faded green by Becky Brown

We're moving forward in time to the end of the 19th century. One important change in the last quarter was dyers' experiments with synthetic dyes.

Star quilt from about 1880 to 1920, when

green dyes were very unreliable.

After 1870 and into the 20th century we see new colors dyed with new synthetic chemicals. The claret red print in the center of the stars above was one success.

But some of the new dyes were failures. The star points here have

faded to what dyers called a dun color---no color.

What hue were these stars when the quilt came out of the frame?

Close examination sometimes reveals color in the seams

where the light didn't hit the fabric. These may have been

red and yellow stars.

Natural chrome orange was valued because it didn't easily fade.

Quilt date-inscribed 1874

There are remnants of blue in the star points. This

was perhaps once a red, white and blue quilt. Turkey red

cost more but was worth the price.

A green star with the center faded to a grayed-blue.

Detail from a tree block in a quilt date-inscribed 1904.

The tan triangles were probably once a dark green.

You don't see many bright green tree blocks from 1880-1920

when the pattern was so popular.

This one's a block never used so it

probably hasn't seen much light or washing.

What color was that faded green?

Probably a rich, dark green with a slight blue cast as in the border here.

You can see the green fading where the light has hit

it on a fold.

Many solid colors were fugitive, fading to khaki with

washing or light.

Star quilt top from 1890-1920

The peachy reds were probably once a bright red.

A new synthetic red called Congo red often faded to this shade.

Reproduction Fabrics

Fugitive dyes presents the reproduction quiltmaker with a philosophical question. When interpreting the end-of-the-19th-century look, should one copy faded solids?

Both red and blue here have faded.

Sometimes the faded color is quite attractive to our taste.

But other dye disasters are not such happy accidents

You see a lot of faded greens in end-of-the-century

Pennsylvania quilts.

You have a range of greens to work with today, some intense;

others approximate the old fugitive greens.

At the top of the image above some Moda Bella Solids with intense greens;

below that green line I drew: taupes and khakis.

Becky faded her own green. She started with the Kelly green in the frame

and then she...

"abused it to create The Look.

First I gave it a little swim in a jar of mild bleach water (washed and dried).
Next I gave it a soak in a solution of Hydrogen Peroxide and water (washed and dried).
And then I boiled 6 black walnuts in a pan of water (yucky) and tossed in the fabric.

That pretty much took care of changing the original green fabric to something close to a dun color. Of course, I could have done it all with photoshop, but this was much more fun."

Solids weren't the only textiles that faded.

Green calicoes at the time were also fugitive, as was thread.

Quilt dated 1897 in an embroidery thread that faded to pale gray.

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?

Sash them with Flying Geese

Quilt from the 1880s, attributed to Mechanics Falls, Maine,

by dealers Woodard & Greenstein.

The stars are 3 inches!

Stars and geese are pieced of several late-19th- century print styles including cretonnes, bronzey browns and red robe prints, which we will be discussing in the following weeks.

If one were making this quilt with our 6" stars each of those geese in the sash would finish to 1-1/2" x 3". The cornerstones would be cut 3-1/2"

Rhubarb Crisp by Jo Morton

Jo Morton drew a pattern for an excellent copy (fewer stars, however)

Maureen at Pursuit of Quilts brightened up Jo's pattern

by using madder oranges for those cornerstones

She planned to use one of my red paisleys on the reverse.

http://pursuitofquilts.blogspot.com/2012/11/october-surprise.html

Apparently, I've enticed Mareen into making more star blocks

(That is a good thing.)

One More Thing About Fading & Bleeding Cottons

Fading dyes created a whole new market for home dyes.

1922 ad for Diamond Dyes,

"Any woman can dye or tint her old worn, faded things new."

Notice the green and reds on her line.

It wasn't only washing that faded the colors. Light was an enemy. And some of those unstable solids just faded away with time, closed up in the blanket chest.

Early red artificial dyes also bled (they still do).

The binding on this quilt is bleeding into the blocks.

The green leaves in the corners have faded.

Women's magazines were full of helpful hints as to how to launder the new cottons:

1915

"Wonders Can be Accomplished With Starch and Gasoline"

Mostly bad advice.

Do not try this at home.

More on faded greens here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/10/faded-greens.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/07/green-calicoes-antique-prints.html

Here's a story that was published several times around 1900 about quilts and blankets being stolen during the Civil War,

In his 1899 book Confederate Military History, Clement Anselm Evans wrote:

"A citizen of Fayetteville, Ark., soon after the war, pointed out to a visitor on the public square, a man seated in a wagon drawn by a horse and a mule, accompanied by a woman who delivered the produce he had for sale. The man wore a brown jeans homespun coat, and the woman a homemade worsted skirt.

A brown jeans homespun coat might be any shade of brown

but probably a twill weave. The brown was often obtained

with white walnut dyes, called butternut.

"You see those people?" he asked of the visitor. "I used to think they were the salt of the earth; and their homemade woolens had a sanctity in my eyes as true emblems of honesty and innocence.

You can't judge a book by its cover,

or an honest family by its homespun.

"But during the war that man manifested his true nature, and but for the general amnesty, could be indicted for a dozen murders, for robbery, arson and larceny. He used to ride through the country and strip the beds of the poor women in these hills, until he piled quilts in his lap so high he could not see his horses' ears. They say the women shot at him, but the quilts proved a protection against their bullets. He is known as 'Bed-quilt Blank.'''

Well it's too bad we don't know old Bed-quilt's real last name. What a scoundrel.

Read the book here at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VZ9YAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA169&dq=confederate+quilt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RA1eVJCTBenksAScqoLoAw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=confederate%20quilt&f=false

Reproduction block by Becky Brown

Vintage quilt, about 1910

After 1880, style in red prints changed. We'll give the claret color in the top left square it's own post soon, but this week we'll talk about the clear, slightly blueish-red dyed with the Turkey red process.

Block from about 1900

The shirting print is the clue to the date.

Turkey red plains look the same in 1840 and 1890.

The dyeing process was slightly different.

See a post on early Turkey reds here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/01/stars-in-time-warp-1-multi-colored.html

Chemists and dyers experimented with synthetic alizarin and artificial red dyes. Positive results included Turkey red's drop in price. Although it still cost more than other cottons, it was more affordable, encouraging the fashion for two-color quilts with Turkey red plains.

Quilt inscribed 1887

The negatives were the simplification of the prints and the unreliability of the artificial reds.

Quilt with a label inked 1881.

Figures were less detailed and colors

were usually limited to white, black (dark brown)

or yellow.

Americans imported Turkey reds before the Civil War when mills in various European countries specialized in the difficult-to-dye color obtained from madder root. When madder’s coloring agent alizarin was synthesized from coal tar in 1868, the dyeing and printing processes became easier.

American mills apparently began producing solids and simple prints from synthetic alizarin later in the century. The dyestuff, imported from Germany, required the same complex discharging and mordanting processes to obtain white and yellow figures as natural madder.

Crooke's dye manual showed the two different chemical processes.

The top swatch was dyed with natural madder dyes;

the other with artificial alizarin, which imitated madder's chemistry.

We can't see any differences, so we really can't rely on Turkey red solid cottons to help us date a quilt. But style changes in the prints are helpful in dating and in reproducing the two different looks.

The block may be mid-century Prussian blue

but the Turkey red setting print is end-of-the century style

Imported Turkey red prints before 1870-80

featured dark brown, blue, green, yellow and white figures.

Quilt with a label inked 1897.

Late-19th-century prints retained the

bright red backgrounds but figures were often just dark brown or black

and/or white

Quilt abut 1900

One can see that the dark figures are printed with madder and a mordant because the dye is rotting the cotton, as madder figures often do.

Bettina's reproduction star captures the look of simple dark figure

on red.

Sometimes pink was in the figures too.

Another swatch from Crookes's dye manual

shows "Madder Red and Pink" much like

my comforter from the early 20th century.

A few of the simple reds became popular styles.

- Printed plaids

The 1902 Sears & Roebuck catalog was probably talking about these:

"German Red Check and Plaids Prints (5½ ¢)"

Reproduction star by Constant Quilter

Large-scale florals were often called Robe Prints

(like lap robes and bath robes there were bed robes)

Robe prints were fashionable for tied comforter bedcovers.

Another print palette option

was yellow figures on red grounds.

Red and yellow ditsies

Quilt inscribed 1916

These were staple prints repeated year after year.

Reproductions

Simple red prints surround a floral center in Becky's repro star.

Below a few classics copying the ditsies from about 1880-1920:

Paula Barnes, Landon Creek

Two from Nancy Gere, Fairmont Park

Erin Turner, Civil War Times

What to Do With Your Stack of Star Blocks?

Make an American Flag

Vintage quilt about 1900

There was a fashion for patriotic quilts in the 1890-1920 era when a couple of wars and Civil War remembrances encouraged a show of the national colors.

I drew the quilt above in EQ7

To make a flag quilt finishing to 96" wide by 72"

you'll need 48 of your 6" finished stars

For the red and white strips cut strips 6-1/2" wide.

Cut 3 red and 3 white strips 48-1/2".

Cut 3 red and 3 white strips 96-1/2".

One More Thing about Turkey Red

One would hope that this box contained what was

advertised: Red embroidery thread that did not fade.

Quilt dated 1905

Turkey red was more expensive than other cottons.

The 1902 Sears & Roebuck catalog had a page of “Bargains in Staple Prints,” offering prints and solids beginning at 5 cents a yard. The most expensive at 10 cents was "Extra Quality Turkey Red Print, solid color. This is absolutely fast oil boiled color." One could buy cheaper Turkey Red prints for 5 cents, "guaranteed color; comes with either white or black printings in new and pretty patterns."

Montgomery Ward's advertised similar prices in 1895.

Before federal regulations, advertisers could say anything they pleased. Let the buyer beware.

Manufacturers lied about Turkey red because they could charge more for an inexpensive dye.

Turkey red is a process not a chemical. The package above probably contained Congo red,
a synthetic red dye that looked good for a while.

A flag quilt:

Turkey red at the top;

Congo red at the bottom.

We see many instances of Congo red fabrics

fading to tan or tangerine.

We still have problems with bleeding reds but reds rarely fade to tan anymore.

Quilt pieced of homespun clothing by

Ann Sloan Lowrie Knox

The North Carolina Museum of History has in its collection a quilt made of fabrics believed to be home dyed and home woven.

These plaids, stripes and solid fabrics, usually of wool yarns

crossed with cotton, were called linseys.

According to family tradition, the quilt is made of pieces of shirts worn by boys in the Lowrie/Knox family, several of whom died in the Confederate Army. The cloth, according to the family story, was homespun and dyed with walnuts and chinaberries.

On the reverse: a post-War plaid, perhaps factory woven.

Ann Sloan, born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1808, married twice. With her first husband Robert B. Lowrie she had two sons Robert and Samuel J. Lowrie. After his death she married widower Samuel Buie Knox (1798-1875) in 1836.

With Samuel she had nine more children between 1837 and 1849---4 girls and 5 boys. The family lived in the Steele Creek community, now a part of Charlotte. Of Ann's seven sons, six joined Confederate units.

Many of Ann's family are buried at the
Steele Creek Presbyterian Church

Sons James, John and Joseph who died in 1864 and 1865 are remembered on a single gravestone.

Joseph died at 18 at Petersburg, Virginia, where he is buried. John, 24 years old, died a few weeks earlier and is buried in Staunton, Virginia. James, 38 years old, died at home in the last days of the Civil War from his wounds.

Attorney Samuel J. joined the Confederate Navy (the county history informs us he was too heavy for the cavalry). He survived the War, although he died in 1870 at the age of forty.

Steele Creek was an early Scots-Irish community.

The cemetery is known for its 18th-century headstones.

Robert Lowrie was paroled at Appomattox Court House when the war ended. He died four years later at 37. William Harrison Knox survived the war, but suffered from his wounds until his death in 1919. The only boy who did not fight was the youngest Charles Pettus Knox, about 12 when the war began. Ann Knox died in 1884, survived by just two of her sons.

Her quilt is similar to other post-War quilts of mixed wool/cotton/linen fabrics, often made to save cloth that held memories of the War. The four-patch with its butternut yellow border might have been made any time between the last days of the Civil War and Ann's death two decades later. Such quilts are hard to date because the fabrics are difficult to date.

See more about the quilt here:
http://ncpedia.org/quilting-part-ii-civil-war-reconstruction

Read a post I wrote a few months ago about similar linsey quilts here:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/02/confederate-quilts.html

The Knox Family Papers are in the J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Click here to read a summary:

https://library.uncc.edu/manuscript/ms0403

Becky Brown's reproduction star

Nancy Near Philadelphia's reproduction star

Both blocks reflect a significant style revolution in quilts at the end of the 19th century:
New shades of brown became the look.

By the 1890s, reddish browns obtained from madder looked dated. Fashion demanded greener, golder browns--- bronze-shaded prints that combined a khaki brown with olive, rose, ivory and a new blue.

A bronze shade of brown in the lower left,

a madder red at top right, set with a faded California gold.

The greener brown indicates a date of after 1880.

The earliest piece of bronze-style print I found when I went through swatch books at the American Textile History Museum was dated March, 1881. In his 1887 dye manual Antonio Sansone described “Manganese Bronze Styles” with various colors on a "bronze ground" . (In my Making History book Sansone is mispelled as Sansome.)

A selection of vintage bronze-style,

brown prints from the end of the 19th century.

A crib quilt top from my collection with a few madder reds and many bronze-shaded browns.

I'd guess it's about 1880-1900. The new browns are a good clue to a date after 1880.

Ocean Wave quilt set with a golden brown print,

again probably end of the 19th century.

It wasn't only the new shade of brown, it was a new

color combination in the prints. Light blues, rosy pinks

and olive greens were apparently easy for printers to combine.

Vintage block: 3 Bronze-style prints and a white shirting

Two of Bettina Havig's repro stars

with the late -19th century olive green as a ground.

Quilters loved these new prints.

Remember: If you dawdle taste will change.

The front of this quilt has many madder browns and reds, perhaps from the 1870s; the back is a combination light blue and tan with pink, red and olive figures--- A decade or two later.

The fashion continued into the 20th century.

Here new grays, blacks and reds with a bronze stripe

in the upper right corner or this vintage block.

Reproductions

This vintage doll seems to be dressed in the same

print I reproduced in Metropolitan Fair a few years ago.

Sharon Keightley,

Pinwheel from Pine Valley Quilts

using Union Blues prints from a JellyRoll.

http://www.quilterblogs.com/tag/union%20blues%20jelly%20roll/

The browns in Union Blues definitely lean towards the green

rather than the madder reds.

Alice's Scrapbag, my newest reproduction line from

Moda, also has some manganese bronze shades,

combining pinks, reds and olive greens with brown.

Heart's Content for Laundry Basket Quilts

by Edyta Sitar

We love the color combination at Moda.

Edyta uses it often and well.

Milky Way quilt pattern from Laundry Basket Quilts

Peace on Earth by Three Sisters

By Lane at That Man Quilts

Look for golden browns

Quilt by Quilted Pineapple

Fabric: Moda's Collection for a Cause: Faith

Pattern: Sweet Spot from Miss Rosie's Quilts

Terry Thompson and I did Calico Craze

maybe 12 years ago.

Becky's star of a bronzey green print with brown and pink figures is from that line.

It's certainly a romantic look.

My Richmond Reds.

Florals focus on olives, pinks and reds on an ivory ground.

Vin du Jour by Three Sisters

Free Pattern from Moda

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars

Make a Double Irish Chain

Quilt date-inscribed 1845

by Mrs. Frank Miles,

Somerset County, New Jersey

Photo from New Jersey Quilts 1777 to 1950

This beautiful scrappy quilt is corralled by a Turkey red

double swag border.

A close interpretation of the vintage quilt

was patterned

in Quilters Newsletter in 2009,

called "Remembering Rebecca Jill Reed"

The pattern is a Double Irish Chain

Double Irish Chain 90" x 90"

You need 41 framed star blocks

and 40 checkerboard blocks.

The traditional Double Irish Chain is based on two blocks, one a checkerboard of 25 squares: 5 x 5. For our 6" stars those squares would finish to 2". 5 x 2" = 10"

The other block has the same size square in the corners.

UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter who corrected my math.

These blocks should both finish to 10 x 10"

Add a frame to each of your stars.

Cut strips 6-1/2" x 2-1/2" and

cornerstone squares 2-1/2"square.

This gives you a 10" block

For this shading you need 13 light and 12 dark

squares cut 2-1/2"

Another 10" block

Or you could switch the shading 13 dark and 12 light for

each checkerboard block, and the reverse coloring for the star frames.

Or refer to Mrs. Miles's 1845 quilt above for a more scrappy look.

One More Thing About Manganese Bronze

Bronze variations from the end of the 19th century

Dye historians credit the discovery of a mineral dye for manganese bronze to the early nineteenth century when it was temporarily popular but impractical. Like madder browns the early manganese bronze tended to rot fabric. That original dye process used manganese chloride but had nothing to do with bronze, an alloy of tin. The word bronze in the name probably refers to the greenish-brown shade, somewhat like a bronze patina.

Late-19th century bronze-style

The brown could be dark too. It's the light blue, pink and olive greens

that are the signature here of a bronze-style print.

My guess is that cloth was dyed in the true manganese-bronze process early in the century, but after 1880 the term "Manganese Bronze Style" was used for cotton color schemes obtained by other methods.

Look for this print in my next line Old Cambridge Pike,

which should be available in late fall. Becky used it in

the star at the top of the post.

Quilt attributed to Ann Sloan Knox

North Carolina Museum of History

Last week I discussed this quilt of plaids, stripes and butternut---coarse fabrics commonly called linsey and jeans. My first thought when I saw the details was that the fabrics were homespun and home woven as the donors suggested---clothing worn by Ann's sons in the Confederate Army, perhaps spun and woven by Ann herself during the war.

But a little research into Ann Knox's life reveals she was a wealthy woman who was unlikely to have spent her time at a spinning wheel. Before the war husband Samuel Buie Knox was worth over $200,000. The 1860 census lists him personally as having a dozen slaves. When he died in 1875 he left hundreds of acres in various plantations in an estate worth $7,000, a diminished fortune, but still substantial.

Lucindy Jurdon, former slave, shows

her mother's spinning wheel to a

WPA interviewer in Georgia in 1938

"My mammy was a fine weaver..."

If any domestic fabric production took place on the Knox properties before Emancipation, the spinners and weavers were probably the slaves. The origins of the fabric and of the patchwork quilt raise many questions.

An alternative view of the quilt's fabrics is that the various cottons, wools and mixed materials were factory-woven at local mills in the Steele Creek community along the Catawba River.

The Catawba River runs near Steele Creek on the

North Carolina/South Carolina border.

William Henry Neel's Steele Creek Cotton Mill was a grist mill converted to cotton production in the 1850s. The neighborhood mill did not produce a lot of cloth, but some of it may be in this quilt.

The small Schenck Mill began cotton production in

1813, the first cotton mill in North Carolina.

In 1848 the Rock Island Woolen Mill, named for Rock Island shoal in the Catawba, was founded.
In 1849 the machines produced about 200 yards of cloth per day. The following year's census records 53 people employed there, a relatively large enterprise.

In 1852, the mill advertised cassimeres, tweed, jeans and kersey. These were not fine wool broadcloths, fancy delaines or crepes but cheaper fabrics woven from coarse yarns.

A reproduction cassimere wool

Cassimere weave

"a cross between the basket weave and a twill... "

Four patch of finer printed wools known as delaine and challis,

probably imported from Europe

The types of cloth described differ mainly in type of weave and weight.

An 1875 description of various types of wool.

The fabric in the center of Ann Knox's quilt

looks much like the reproduction

"Brown Jeans Cloth"

sold today by William Booth Drapers.

The Rock Island Mill seems to have thrived in Steele Creek until the Civil War began in 1861. Operations then moved a few miles into the city of Charlotte, probably to ramp up production for Confederate uniforms. As the War dragged on higher quality fabric was harder to find. The fabrics in the medallion quilt may have been scraps from Ann Knox's wartime family clothing, stitched from locally purchased cloth.

Post-war production at Rock Island continued in similar style. An 1869 description of the mill's Charlotte products:

"One thousand to twelve hundred yards of cassimeres per day...The goods are from all wool cassimeres with double and twisted all wool warps, fit to adorn a Broadway dandy, down to the strong, heavy, durable jeans, so much liked by our own people, and so cheap as to be within the reach of the poorest."

So while the fabrics in the Knox quilt may have been cut from the shirts Ann's sons wore before their deaths near war's end, the fabric might very well have been factory cloth from the local mill.

Linsey quilt, a nine-patch set with madder-dyed wool strips

similar to fabric in Ann Knox's center.

The romanticism of "homespun" often embellishes the view of donors. As Clement Anselm Evans wrote in his 1899 Confederate Military History:

"Homemade woolens had a sanctity in my eyes as true emblems of honesty and innocence."

Homewoven or factory woven?

The results would look the same, no matter how mechanized

the small pre-War factory

Steele Creek Presbyterian Church today

Locally produced fabrics from small mills/factories are also worth saving as quilts and in museums, but the romance of "innocent homespun" tends to override an accurate history of successful industry.

The Spinner 1880,

Painting by Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Lewis Hine, "Warper at his Machine,"

Mill in Newton, NC, 1908

Library of Congress

Account of a fire at the old Rock Island Woolen Factory building.

Screen shot from American Memory

from the Library of Congress.

By the time Charlotte's Rock Island Mill building burned in 1883 it was being used as a warehouse. Larger mills had taken over the state's fabric production.

The question of who actually made the quilt might also be contested. It's time to look at these "honest homespun" quilts in an honest historical context.

Read about the cotton mills of Mecklenburg County here:
http://www.cmhpf.org/essays/cottonmills.html

Becky Brown reproduction star,

with a bronzey/cretonne look and large scale figures.

"The Popular New Cretonnes"

Woman's World in the twenties.

The border shows children's prints and florals.

Star quilt with cretonne alternate blocks and border,

About 1880

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Woman with cretonne drape about 1880

Cretonnes, like earlier chintzes, were designed as furnishing fabrics,not really meant for clothing.

After the Civil War, as America went crazy for calico. Small-scale dress prints manufactured by American mills dominated women's at-home clothing and their quilts. Large-scale prints, the European chintzes that had been so popular in quilts made before the war, came to be "chintzy" in their eyes.

Charm quilt about 1880

Charm quilts were one result of the Calico Craze.

They may include a few large-scale furnishing prints

but the point here was collecting small-scale prints.

A similar quilt about 1910

with a cretonne on the reverse.

In 1861 the Ohio Cultivator warned women against two things:

1) Patchwork

2) And "old fashioned 'curtain calico' with its monstrous figures and glaring combination of colors."

An old-fashioned chintz quilt

Do NOT try this at home!

A new fashioned cretonne top about 1890.

You couldn't get any less elegant than this, according

to the fashion arbiters.

You can see how "chintzy" began to imply something cheap and unfashionable.

By the 1870s manufacturers avoided the word chintz and used the word cretonne. Cretonnes were the "proper thing for draperies, hangings, furniture covering, etc." according to the Sears catalog in the 1890s.

Cover of the Ladies Home Journal in 1921.

Chintz was back for decorating

What's the difference between a chintz and a cretonne? Time. Like the words reticule and handbag,

or petticoat and slip.

Comforter about 1900

The red and pink ground cretonnes here have a texture.

They are twills with a diagonal raised surface rather

than plain weave.

American cretonnes were usually printed with synthetic dyes, sometimes on textured goods such as twills or crepes, so one way to tell a late-nineteenth-century cretonne from an earlier chintz is by texture. Early chintzes were rarely printed on a twill or a cotton sateen. Later cretonnes are often coarser or sleazier fabric.

Cretonnes can be beautifully drawn and printed.

This one is French, printed in the late 19th-century bronze shades.

Another characteristic of later cretonnes is better registration. Improved technology permitted printers to precisely align figures. Greens were a single step process with no overlap of blue and yellow as in the old overprinted foliage. Backgrounds fit the figures without the overlap and outlines found in early chintzes.

New dyes allowed a wide range of color in cretonnes but many dyes were quite fugitive, particularly blues not derived from traditional indigo or Prussian blue.

Did the cretonne on the right bordering the triangle quilt fade?

Or was it always so shadowy?

Original document print for a cretonne repro

in my Arnold's Attic line of several years ago

Lots of olive and lots of pink in a bronze-style colorway.

That new brown style made these large-scale prints novel.

This one imitates a woven tapestry.

Many shades of blue were available

Cretonnes were popular for the back of an all-calico quilt or comforter.

They were sometimes described as robe prints.

Black was newly available to printers so for the first time we see black-ground

furnishing fabrics.

Reproductions

Carol Gilham Jones

Arnold's Attic

The red colorway of the leaf print above.

Becky Brown, Ladies Album.

Pink was a background possibility in the bronze style prints.

Another of Becky's blocks with a grayed blue figure

on medium brown ground.

Cretonnes are made to fussy-cut.

My Ladies' Album collection had an exotic Jacobean floral cretonne.

We at Moda explore these beautifully drawn late 19th-century cretonnes quite a bit. As I mentioned last week, Edyta Sitar has interpeted many bronze-style prints in small and large scale.

Heart's Content

Edyta Sitar for Laundry Basket Quilts

A blue cretonne-style print from my Alice's Scrapbag

And a pink one from my upcoming collection

Old Cambridge Pike

Two by Nancy Gere

Look for romantic, well registered, naturalistic florals.

Here's your chance to use blacks in a repro quilt.

Celeste from Moda

The blue really captures the period color...

And it will not fade like the old cretonnes.

Vin du Jour by Three Sisters.

Romance.

What To Do With Your Stack of Stars?

Copy the Quilt at the Top of the Page

The quilt from the LACMA collection at the top of the page has inspired several

of today's quiltmakers.

Judy Severson---the unmitered stripe is

an important part of the look here.

Barb at Fun with Barb

http://funwithbarbandmary.blogspot.com/

Barb has done it at least twice.

Jerrye Van Leer

One More Thing About Cretonne

Vintage quilt.

Not elegant. Chintzy as a matter of fact.

If an American word has cheap connotations you can always Frenchify it. (Do you French readers know we do that in America?) We pronounce the names of inexpensive stores as if they were French.

Zhay See Pennay for JC Penney

Tar-zhay for Target

When fabric manufacturers needed a new name for furnishing scale fabrics they came up with Cretonne, derived from Creton, a French town that had specialized in manufacturing a coarse cloth made from hemp. Cretonne (pronounced kree-tawn'by women who remember when it was popular) was synonymous with the word "chintz" between 1870 and 1950.

Pardon! as we try to say in French.

Collection of Dr. Carol Morton

Detail of a redwork quilt featuring symbols of the

Grand Army of the Republic

veteran's organization

The exhibit at the Pasadena History Museum When Johnny Came Marching West: How the Civil War Shaped Pasadena features four Civil-War-related quilts. Two are post-war redwork quilts
honoring the veterans in the G.A.R.

The show closes September 20, 2015.

http://pasadenahistory.org/all-exhibits/johnny-came-marching-west-civil-war-shaped-pasadena/

Some of the symbols are corps badges.

Others like the tea cup are more difficult to interpret.

Not much is known about this quilt's origins.

The other redwork quilt has much to tell us.

Block from the John F. Godfrey Post of the

G.A.R. in Pasadena, California

The block at the top left honors a Pasadena GAR president in 1912

Next to it a block from Leicester, England

The entire quilt is covered with names in the form of the cross that is the

symbol of the Woman's Relief Corps (W.R.C), the

ladies' auxiliary of the Union veteran's group.

Redwork W.R.C. quilt

Courtesy of Linn and Jean Hoadley

Collection of Dr. Carol Morton

The quilt is shown with a W.R.C. badge from a G.A.R. 46th National Encampment in Los Angeles, 1912

Train excursion from San Francisco

to Los Angeles

I'm guessing the quilt is connected to that five-day National Reunion in September, 1912, perhaps made by the Thimble Club of the John F. Godfrey Chapter as a fund-raiser and raffle quilt.

I found a little more about the Thimble Club of Pasadena, including photos of members about 1930. This may be another Thimble Club, but the W.R.C. Thimble Club continued into the 1960s.

Thimble Club at Redondo

On a bus trip to Balboa.

They got around.

Read a post about the WRC quilt here:

http://pasadenahistory.org/curators-blog/wrc/

A double blue print star in Becky Brown's reproduction block.

Vintage quilt top about 1870-1890

Blue with a touch of violet was popular about the same time as the bronze-shaded browns we've been discussing for the past few weeks.

Blue basket weave in a Centennial quilt from about 1876

We call this print style Lancaster blue today because we see

so much of it in vintage Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, quilts.

Pennsylvanians loved to mix it with primary colors.

Lancaster County quilters thought it the perfect background

for piecing and applique.

Pennsylvania star from the Flack collection,

end of the 19th century.

It's a variation on a shirting print---lines and small figures

printed in a rather electric blue-violet.

Like the double pink below, there's often white showing through

one or two shades of blue---a double blue?

Star from the Nickols collection at the Mingei Museum.

Notice the lace print at bottom. We'll talk about those next week.

Polka dot blue in a block dated 1875

Swatch dated 1896 from the New York Public Library Collection

Vintage quilt, last quarter of the 19th century.

The shade of blue is an excellent clue to a date of about

1870-1900 (and even later in eastern Pennsylvania)

The color was popular at the same time as Greek key patterns in cotton.

Roman mosaic border

The design is a variation of a classical meander pattern,

found in borders from antiquity.

The Greek key was a fashionable trim

during the 1860s,

...Taste that lingered

into the 1870s and '80s in cotton prints.

1870s?

1870s

The American Museum of Textile History owns

this apron of a centennial print (1876) with a Greek key border.

Rather like this pre-printed apron from 1878 sold

at a Crocker Farms auction.

I didn't realize pre-printed aprons went back that far.

Perhaps the rage for log cabin patchwork and Greek keys

were related.

Greek key stripes are also a good clue to a quilt from about 1870-1900,

often found with the Lancaster blue at the top left.

Reproductions

Repro block in blue with a touch of violet by Bettina Havig

Here's a repro quilt that Lori at Humble Quilts

made from her late friend Jill's stash.

Judie Rothermel's done several collections of Lancaster.

This week you should be looking for:

Lancaster blues
Or Greek key meanders in any color.

I'd check the furnishings fabrics if you can't find

any Greek key-style in the quilt fabrics department.

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?

An Innovative Meander

This complicated set is a variation of the traditional sash plus cornerstone set.

Add a sash finishing to 1-1/2" to one side of

all of your blocks. It's the same thing you'd

do if you were going to set these 6" blocks

with a 1-1/2" sash and cornerstone.

Like this.

Once you add this to every block

(light sash, red cornerstone)

You have a 7-1/2" square.

But rotate the blocks as you put them on your design wall.

Let the sash meander across the quilt.

One More Thing About Lancaster Blue

I have some guesses about the dyes and terms used for this color.The dyers and printers certainly didn't call it Lancaster blue.

Crookes's 1874 dye manual shows this swatch of "Ultramarine."

Note faded spot

I wonder if it's not a new shade from the old reliable mineral dye Prussian Blue.

(Well--- not that reliable, it does fade to white with alkalai laundry soap.)

Here we are at week 36---I have posts planned up to week 47, which will be early December. I bet we could cover Cleveland with all the stars we've made.

Susan Robb's quilt, 1860s

Collection of the Texas Tech University Museum, Lubbock, Texas

made in Chicot County, Arkansas

One of the most impressive quilts related to the Civil War is now on display at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles in the exhibit Empire and Liberty: The Civil War in the West, up through January 3, 2016.

http://civilwar.theautry.org/

Susan Robb’s quilt, featured in Bets Ramsey and Merikay Waldvogel’s book Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War, pictures two columns of soldiers, one under the first Confederate national flag and the other carrying a Confederate battle flag.

Perhaps Susan meant to represent her sons who fought in Confederate regiments.

In the center block: two units of Confederate soldiers

led by officers. It is likely that one of these units

represents Susan's stepson William Henry Robb

who joined the Chicot Rangers in September 19, 1861,

when he was 16.

The Chicot Rangers became the First Arkansas Mounted Rifles. A week after William signed up Captain Daniel Harris Reynolds noted in his diary: "1861 Sept 28 Sunday. William H. Robb [and 5 others] came up to join my company." Robb was accompanied by David S. Stephenson, a carpenter in his twenties who lived with the family on their farm.

Daniel Harris Reynolds was Captain of

Company "A" of the 1st Arkansas Mounted Rifles.

Is Captain Reynolds one of the bearded men in the scene?

There's been some confusion in describing the quilt over the years, with some believing the flag in this company to be a Union flag.

Notice the green kepi (hats) on the soldiers.

Confederate flag retrieved from the battlefield at Wilson's Creek

near Springfield, Missouri.

From Wilson's Creek National Battlefield

William's company fought at that battle in August before he joined. The flag above once had 11 stars to represent the 11 states of the Confederacy. It's definitely the first Confederate flag with its ring of stars and three stripes. Susan's flag has 13 stars, perhaps an echo of the original 13 colonies.

The uniforms in that company, pink shirts and brown textured pants, are not Confederate regulation.

David Alexander

1st Arkansas Mounted Rifles

but as the portrait above indicates, regulation uniforms were not required.

The other company is dressed in more official uniforms with red stripes down their pants legs and gray shirts. The flag may be a regimental banner similar to the one below

9th Arkansas Infantry regimental banner

Hempstead Rifles of Arkansas marching with a new regimental flag

From Wilson's Creek National Battlefield

William is the only one of Susan's four sons and stepsons whom I found with a Civil War record. He was the eldest. Brother Theodore was 14 years old when William joined. Susan's youngest sons Aaron and Thomas were about 9 and 6.

The eight floral blocks are her own version

of the Pomegranate

See a large picture here at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum's website:

http://worldquilts.quiltstudy.org/americanstory/node/6268

Becky Brown's reproduction star,

made from the last scrap of an old chocolate and blue

reproduction print in the center.

Vintage star.

There are two fashionable late-century brown styles

here. In the large triangles, a bronzey-brown acorn print.

The other browns are something seen about the same time, a brown

on a blue background.

Block from a top dated 1879

The large squares above are another example

of this color craze of the 1870-1900 period, kind of a silvery blue

and dark brown.

Quilt dated 1872 from the North Carolina quilt project,

photo from the Quilt Index

Look for two color prints---brown on pale blue gray---as in the sashing here.

They read as a warm gray or silver and may have been called mourning prints.

I imagine the combination was thought suitable for everyday housewear: fashionable but won't show the dirt. There were quite a few of these in 1870-1900 scrapbags. Double pinks for the girls; brownish grays for the women.

That distinctive blue-gray background makes the color scheme

a good clue to a date of 1870-1900.

Note the blue and brown lace print under the piece of Lane's net in this charm quilt from the 1870-1890 period. In it we really see the two colors that were so fashionably combined. The Lane's net in the center and several other hexagons are in the same palette with figures of fine brown lines on a pale blue ground.

You also see a redder brown added as in the coral print above.

It may be that the brown figures were done with madder (or artificial madder) dyes.

There's a tiny reddish figure in the center square here.

The browns tend to be a chocolate color.

I'd guess the blue gray has something to do with the Lancaster blue

printing process discussed last week.

Quilt dated 1894 with dark print of blue gray, brown and brick red

I'd imagine madder reds could easily be added.

A dress in the height of fashion:

The brown on pale blue palette;

the figure a striped lace print.

An 1892 ad for "Lace stripe and other fancy Ginghams,

neat stripe and check effects in Zephyr Ginghams.

(Gingham refers to the fabric weave rather than the look.)

"A goodly proportion of these have

been selected expressly for children."

I have several photos of doll quilts and crib quilts

in which the lace stripe seems to have been cut out

and used as a border.

I'd estimate these are all from the 1870-1890 period.

Turkey red dogtooth applique over a lace print for a crib quilt border.

The same print, a stripe?

Or was it an all-over dot with a lace border?

In the 1870s and '80s you see a lot of lace borders

along the selvages of calicoes.

Lace prints were printed as all-over designs as well

as stripes and border prints. The main criterion is

that the figures imitate lace. Above a classic from

the 1870s with a dot of madder orange.

Lace prints were also printed at other

times. Above a charm quilt with a striking

blue and green neon print from about 1910.

Another neon: bright and black lace stripe from the early 20th century.

Lace prints were quite the thing in the 1870-1920s, so if you want to reproduce that look you need a few in the stash. Chocolate and blue would be perfect for last quarter of the 19th century.

Lace print in the lower right corner.

[Time Machine Information: Dial it back to the 1870s

when prints were so abundant, beautiful and cheap.]

Reproductions

This week you have two options:

1) Chocolate and blue prints

2) or Lace Prints

A repro star by Kathy Cline...

Using a lace print from Jo Morton

The chocolate on blue palette is not easy to find but here are

a few from recent years.

Another by Jo from Emilie

Two repros by Judie Rothermel

American Pastimes,

again chocolate on blue or madder on blue.

You may remember Becky's terrific star in eccentric prints.

The stripe (an African fabric) is chocolate brown on blue.

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?

Make a Triple Irish Chain

The inspiration here is a Triple Irish Chain and star quilt made

about 1900 when red and white quilts were the thing.

I monkeyed around in Photoshop and figured out the

pattern, which is a traditional Triple Irish Chain.

Two blocks based on a checkerboard of 49 squares.

For more about the Double Irish Chain see post #34:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/09/stars-in-time-warp-34-bronze-style.html

BlockBase says that Ruby McKim

first published the name Triple Irish Chain for this pair of

alternating blocks (BlockBase #1019a).

The variation with the star in the center has no number but it's an interesting way to set stars. Maybe more interesting with 14" stars rather than the 6" stars we've been working with. But it's an idea.

Since we are working with 6" stars and putting them into

a 7x7 grid the math will not be pretty.

Here's the 7x7 checkerboard

Here's the alternate block

with one of Becky's stars inside the frame.

Seems simple but the question is what size are all those squares.

It only took a few hours to figure it out.

(And there are good odds I am wrong, wrong, wrong.)

UPDATE: Suzanne says I am wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you added an inch strip to either side of the 6" block you'd have an 8" block.

If you divide an 8" finished block into a grid of 49 squares you need to cut those squares

1-5/8".

At least that's what EQ7 says.

Now there are easier ways to get a checkerboard grid

than cutting individual squares.

I'll leave it to anyone ambitious enough to try it

to figure out some fast piecing methods.

I have to rest my brain.

One More Thing about the Brown on Blue Palette

The combination just suggests chocolate, possibly because the Hershey Company has been using reddish brown and silvery blue on their chocolate bars for generations.

(They seem to have dropped the slogan "More Sustaining than Meat.")

Quilt with Centennial prints in chocolate on blue,

dated 1876 in the quilting in each sash rectangle.

Nancy J. Wood Wright (1797-?)

Detail of a Log Cabin quilt with embroidered genealogical information.

1877. Photos from the Kansas Museum of History.

"Nancy J Wood was born Nov 2 1797

& married Jonathan Wright June 15, 1815 in Scott Co Ky

I am 80 year 24 of this month 1877"

The Kansas Museum of History in Topeka has an exhibit up now called The Great Soldier State: Kansas and the Civil War.

Flag with 34 stars representing Kansas as the 34th state

The show features flags from the Civil War and a single quilt from 1877 embroidered with genealogical information.
https://www.kshs.org/p/the-great-soldier-state-kansas-and-the-civil-war/18970

"John Tipton Wright was born Jan 22 1837. he enlisted in 51st Ill reg infantry on the 25 of May 1862 & was shot in battle on the 27 of June 1864 at Kenesaw mountain in Georgia.
Cruel War"

Chaplain Lewis Raymond wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune after the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain listing the casualties in the 51st Illinois, among the Privates "J[ohn T.] Wright."

Nancy refers to her siblings (17 of them) and

children (9):

"I have outlived 15 brothers and sisters & 9 of my own children"

The overall quilt pattern is a log cabin block alternating with plain blocks in which florals and

text are embroidered.

Most of the fabrics are wool or wool combination weaves.

Condition is poor with much fabric loss

but the embroidered details are still vivid.

Her second child George (1817-1852) is

remembered with a dog (or a cow?)

The quilt is on exhibit through January 3, 2016.

Nancy tells us a lot about herself but other records are hard to find. She was born in Washington County, Kentucky, on November 20, 1797, about five years after Kentucky became the 15th state. John Adams had recently been inaugurated as the second President of the United States. The national capitol was still in Philadelphia.

At 18 she married Jonathan Wright after the War of 1812. They had twelve children between 1816 and 1841. The youngest was Jacob, born in Owen County, Indiana (near Bloomington). By the time of the Civil War the family had gone west again. Three of her boys enlisted in Illinois regiments out of Lincoln, Illinois.

A rosy view of Lincoln, Illinois in Logan County

"Lycurgus G Wright was born August 23 1836

he enlisted in the 11 Ill cav in the Federal army

he was shot Feb 16 1865 in Tenn

oh this war"

Official records indicate Lycurgus was accidentally shot and killed in Hernando M [Mississippi].

"Jacob S. Wright was born June 11, 1841 & enlisted in the

Federal army April 61 for 3 months

then he enlisted sep 1861 & was in the War till 1865

he got home and married Lou Council Dec 28 1865 he is alive ??"

(or that might say 77, the year of the quilt)

After the war Jacob and Lou settled in Springfield, Illinois.

Nancy's daughter, another Nancy Jane Wright was born January 30, 1825. She married Hiram Tolliver. Her grave is in Rooks County, Kansas, where she died May 5, 1905.

Nancy Wright Tolliver's grave in the Survey Cemetery

One more item about Nancy's husband Jonathan: He is mentioned in a county biography of his daughter-in-law Lou Council Wright.

"[Jacob's] father was a soldier in the war of 1812; was wounded in the head during an engagement with the Indians, and but for the interposition of Tecumseh would have been killed. He was made prisoner, taken to Sandusky, and retained there until exchanged."

Perhaps Jonathan Wright (1783-1851) was at the Siege of Fort Meigs on the Maumee in Ohio with one of the Kentucky militia who fought the British and Tecumseh's troops in May, 1813

"Nancy J. Wright is now 80 years & 34 days old

& made a finish of this quilt 29th of Dec 1877

oh if I had a home & would not be in no bodys way"

See the exhibit before it closes on January 3, 2016.

Reproduction star by Bettina Havig

Vintage star block.

Black on white prints are

an excellent clue to a post-1890 date.

Black cotton prints were not available before 1890 or so.

Before that date black dyes were too unreliable.

They faded or destroyed the cotton fibers.

What a novelty true blacks must have been at the

end of the 19th century.

Grays in the blocks and setting strips in a quilt date-inscribed 1897.

This had to be a hot look in 1897.

Another hot look was Asian-influenced prints characterized by figures such as carnations and grasses, images one might see in Japanese design. Sets were tossed and figures were far apart, giving a distinctive airiness to prints of the 1880-1910 years.

The figures were spaced so far apart in this black ground print that

they hardly made it into the patchwork.

Tillie McCoy's name is in the house quilt above, dated 1897.

That wheat or grass print was one of the novel

fashions of the time. Indigos were important for an Asian look.

Grasses in indigo and browns.

Two graceful prints cut a little too small to show off their best features.

We often just get a glimpse of these Japanese-inspired prints in patchwork.

Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt, about 1908.

Notice the wallpaper--- birds in grasses---

very Japanese-inspired.

Calico ditsies and Asian-inspired design in a vintage block.

Becky found a great Asian-style print for this repro star.

Detail of a charm quilt top with several tossed, widely spaced figures along the top row.

The blue-gray polka dot fabric has a lace border print. (See the last post.)

The unknown maker picked prints in novel styles

and colors, probably in the 1880s

Another detail showing two colorways of one of these widely spaced designs.

The unusual figure is rings of beads, another minor fad in the 1880s and '90s.

And then there were prints that were just strange.

Reproductions

Here's a repro block Shawn stitched when we were doing California Golds.

These black and gray reproductions seem plentiful right now---

Good time to buy a bunch of fat quarters and make a box that

says BLACKS 1890-1920

Vintage Shirting and Dress Prints by Barbara J. Eikmeier

Several excellent blacks among the shirtings, blues and claret-colored reds.

Reproduction star by Bettina Havig

Kathy Schmitz has several in her current Sturbridge line.

Betsy Chutchian's Eliza's Indigo, scheduled for October delivery,

includes a nice variety from black through gray to white.

Judie Rothermel periodically does a collection from the 1890-1920 period.

Mourning Grays by Carrie Quinn

mixes lovely purples with black and gray prints.

Asian-influenced prints are more difficult to find.

One of my favorite lines was called

Leaving the Century. which Terry Thompson and I did for

Moda in 1999.

Our theme: Asian-style prints

imitating fabrics from 1899.

The background in Becky's repro star is from that line.

Roseanne Smith, Leaving the Century, 1999-2015

Roseanne just got her quilt back from quilter Lori Kukuk.

Lots of blacks and Japanese-style florals in that collection.

Three repros from Nancy Gere.

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?

Sash them with Cornerstones.

Quilt from the last quarter of the 19th century

Stella Rubin's Shop.

This seems like a go-to set for us today.

Set blocks on the straight with sashing separating them.

At the intersections put a contrasting cornerstone square.

The cornerstone is almost as large as the center square here.

Maggie Potter's design for the Lands End collection:

a contemporary quilt with a similar set.

Vintage quilt, about 1900

But setting blocks in a straight grid parallel to the edges

was not the obvious choice before 1880 or so.

This antique is set with a claret-red polka dot.

An Amish quilt (?) with the cornerstones as large as the star's center square

You don't see much of this set until after 1870.

Amish quilt of solid colors,

probably mid-20th century

Quilt dated 1864.

Earlier quilters were more likely to use a diagonal set.

If you are looking for a set typical of the 1880-1920 period consider a horizontal/vertical grid of sashing (wide or narrow) with contrasting squares in the corners.

Linsey quilt (coarse wool/cotton fabrics)

Linsey quilts are hard to date as the fabrics could have

been woven in 1810 or 1890---at home or in a factory.

In this case the sashing and cornerstones are almost as large as the block.

End of the 19th century.

Proportions: sash as wide as the star's center

One More Thing About Black Cottons

Rotten black in a 1930s quilt

Black dyes were notorious for their unreliability. Even after discoveries of analine dyes that inexpensively colored cotton a good black, serious problems remained.

Some blacks damaged the fabric so much that it shredded.

One culprit was (and is) sulfur black.

But there were other unreliable chemical mixtures. Crookes in his 1874 dye manual shows a scrap of that wiggle stripe dyed with "Lucas black [which] finds no favor either with dealers or consumers." He tells us it has "bad properties" but doesn't say what those failures are. Fading or rotting are the likely problems.

With rotting being most likely.

Quilt Recalling the Benton Barracks Hospital in St. Louis

Stars in a Time Warp 22: White Ground Chintzes

James and Caroline Boston's Civil War

Stars in a Time Warp 32: Faded Synthetic Dyes

Bed-quilt Blank: A Bounder in Butternut

Stars in a Time Warp 33: Later Turkey Reds

Ann Knox's Linsey Quilt

Stars in a Time Warp 34: Bronze-style Prints

Another View of Ann Knox's Quilt

Stars in a Time Warp 35: Cretonne

Two Redwork Quilts at the Pasadena History Museum

Stars in a Time Warp 36: Lancaster blue and Greek Keys

Susan Robb's Confederate Quilt

Stars in a Time Warp 37: Chocolate & Blue plus Lace Prints

Nancy Wright's Family Record Quilt at the Kansas Museum of History

Stars in a Time Warp 38: Black, Gray and Asian-Style Design

Patchwork Papers for Civil War Re-enactors

Stars in a Time Warp 39: Claret Red

Papers for Piecing: Adversity Envelope Covers

Stars in a Time Warp 40: Cadet Blue & Celestials