Look at Moda's Home Page

Because I am all over it. When you click on some of the frames it directs you to my stuff.
Click here:
http://www.unitednotions.com/un_main.nsf/main?openpage

Fort Sumter block by S. J. Gilbert

The blocks are from the Civil War Quilts Flickr group

Click here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/civilwarquilts2011/

I'm pretty proud of that home page! Thanks, Moda!

Which gives me the opportunity to give you some links to some actual Civil War Reunion footage on You Tube.  

Fox & Geese by Carmen Maria

Two views of the 75th Anniversary of Gettysburg, one with Franklin Roosevelt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUd4txQ8X_g&feature=related

And footage from the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIJaxu3w4-U&feature=related

Little Blue Basket by Theresia B.

London Square by Australia Sue

Northern Lily & Southern Rose Block 1

Block #1

Reunion

by Barbara

Here's the first block in the nine-month block of the month

 I'm doing this year with Moda called Northern Lily, Southern Rose.

I moved my star down a bit to show the fabric with the words "Union".

Susan Stiff designed it with me and made the model.

 She fussy-cut the word Union for the star.

We both used prints from my current Moda Civil War reproduction collection called Civil War Reunion.

 There's no green in that collection so we used a Moda Bella Solid. Susan appliqued hers to a tan print from CW Reunion. I used a monochrome toile-style print from my scrapbag.

Ilyse Moore is making the blocks at 8" and using an updated dusty pink and olive combination.

I chose a federal shield as the central block because I've seen many quilts from the 1860s with that image.

1850-1880

Here are a few antique samplers from online auctions

featuring a shield among other patriotic symbols and a lot of florals.

1870-1900

1850-1870

See the quilt that inspired the Reunion shield at the Quilt Index.org
It is a New Jersey sampler, inscribed in the center, "Presented to Reverend Mr. and Mrs. D.B. Stout by the ladies of Leedsville Dec. 1867."  Reverend Stout was pastor of the Middletown Baptist Church from 1837 to 1875.
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-55D

Another sampler with a shield, this one from New London, Connecticut
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=47-7B-2F8

Ask your quilt shop if they are carrying Northern Lily, Southern Rose this year.

And for inspiration a few more shields from vintage folk art and popular culture.

Three stars on this Memorial Day postcard

Diagonal stripes

Spatterware

Stripes going horizontally and vertically in this ink drawing.

Northern Lily & Southern Rose Block of the Month

Northern Lily, Southern Rose

82" x 82"

For the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of America's Civil War I've worked with Moda to do an applique Block of the Month called Northern Lily/Southern Rose

If you went to Quilt Market in the fall you might have noticed the quilt behind the sales reps. We are coordinating it with the reproduction collection Civil War Reunion.

Susan Stiff hand-appliqued the actual quilt.

Here's a snapshot.

I love the idea of two florals representing the North and the South, an image that Lucy Larcom used in an 1854 poem and song called the Kansas Call.

Lucy's name was mispelled on the sheet music

 (there's an M, not an N on the end).

When the Kansas Troubles inspired partisans to move to the Kansas Territory as antislavery or proslavery advocates, Lucy won a contest with a poem to inspire western migration.

Sisters true, Join us too
Where the Kansas flows
Let the Northern Lily bloom
With the Southern Rose

The poem was later set to music.

We can recall her imagery to celebrate the Civil War Reunion after the war.

For this Block of the Month pattern (9 months) I chose nine appliqued blocks drawn from mid-19th-century quilts---a Union shield and eight appliquéd florals. The four roses and four lilies were each regional designs, favorites in New York or Tennessee, Pennsylvania or the Carolinas.

You can buy the pattern through your quilt shop. We are ready to ship it so ask if your shop is participating. If not have them contact their Moda rep.

I'm making one too and I will keep you posted throughout the rest of the year. I'll show you the first block in a few days. If you love to applique you'll enjoy working with these little known traditional blocks.

Civil War Reunion Star

Union Star

a Mockup using EQ7

and my Civil War Reunion prints

Towards the end of the 19th century Susie King Taylor wrote her memories of being a Civil War nurse. Bringing her story up to date, she described an 1898 ladies' fair in Massachusetts to raise money for the causes of the Grand Army of the Republic (the GAR), the Union veteran's organization.

Her contribution: "A large quilt of red, white and blue ribbon that made quite a sensation."

Susie King Taylor

Quilts were an important part of the fundraising and fellowship, especially in the women's auxiliary groups such as the Women's Relief Corps (WRC). Magazines published patterns with suggestions for making designs up in red, white and blue. An example:

"The Double Star makes a beautiful quilt for a G.A.R. or W.R.C. Fair. Make the outside of red, the star of blue and the center white. If the date 1861 is worked on the white everyone will recognize the significance, M.E.B."

(Ouch! say the quilt historians. Everybody 100 years later will think it's a quilt made in 1861----but I digress...)

GAR Parade about 1912 in New York

Union Star

The Ladies’ Art Company, one of the oldest businesses to offer quilt patterns, sold this pieced Union Star design about that time, probably because there was such an interest in Civil War reminders.
Although perfect for the Civil War Reunion theme, the pattern wasn’t often made up. The probable reason is that the piecing looks difficult, but the curves in the circle and Y-seams in the star are easy enough.

Here's a free pattern for a 9" finished block you can download as a PDF.
Click here for the Civil War Reunion Star

http://www.siputflash.com/CW%20RUnion%20Star.pdf

And see a red, white and blue G.A.R fundraiser from Massachusetts in the Quilt Index by clicking here:
http://www.quiltindex.org/basicdisplaynew.php?kid=4-15-38
It was signed by everyone from President Grant and General Sherman to Louisa May Alcott.

See one made of Civil War Reunion ribbons in a February, 2011 episode of the Antiques Roadshow by clicking on this video:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1799383067/

Read Susie King Taylor's Reminsicences of My Life in Camp at Google Books by clicking here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=v3-cyYKvZr8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=susie+king+taylor+reminiscences&hl=en&ei=n7RrTcvpLYL7lwfUxoD_AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=quilt&f=false

Civil War Reunion & Memorial Quilts

[I'd intended to post this information about reunion and memorial quilts today even before I'd read the statement about the missing eagle in a similar quilt discussed in my last post. The flag quilt in that January 22nd post might better be interpreted as one of these veteran's quilts rather than as a message about racial equality.]

One occasionally comes across an antique quilt with Civil War Reunion images.

They are often crazy quilts, popular in the 1880-1910 period when reunions of the Union Army and the Confederate Army were annual events.

Commemorative ribbons were passed out at the encampments. A crazy quilt is a good place to preserve the printed silk souvenir. 

Florida Reunion of Confederate Veterans

Quilts with veteran's group connections were made for other reasons too.

The San Jose Mueum of Quilts and Textiles

owns this wonderful 1892 example made by the

Ladies of the G.A.R. in San Jose, California.

The GAR was the name for the largest Union veterans' group---Grand Army of the Republic.

This one was made as a gift for Hattie Burgess Shattuck

 by the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic,

Anna Ella Carroll Circle No. 1, San Jose, California

See more about it by clicking here
http://www.cqmagonline.com/vol09iss2/articles/994/index.shtml

About 1910

Very often the Ladies Auxiliary was present at the events.

Notice everyone is wearing a ribbon with a medal, even the child on the right,

 although no one is wearing a uniform.

(Those old uniforms probably didn't fit at this point anyway.)

Mid 1890s

This block in a crazy quilt seems to recall an 1893

 Blue and Gray reunion with soldiers from both sides.

The embroidery says:

Reunion

Confederate

Survivors

Greenwood (?) S.C.

July 4th

1893.?

It  looks like someone embroidered over a printed silk ribbon, which eventually wore away.

Here's a detail of a wool embroidered comforter dated 1910 with the letters G.A.R. The photo is black and white. The piece seems to have uniform buttons stitched to it and it may be cut from scraps of an old Union uniform. (I'm always doubtful about supposed uniform scraps but this memorial quilt actually might have some.) This coverlet seems to have been a memorial to an individual veteran. 

See more about wool tied quilts from the early 20th century by clicking on this post:

http://siputflash.blogspot.com/2009/11/civil-war-uniforms-or-not.html

Here's a link to another crazy quilt with reunion ribbons:

http://www.henrycountyky.com/history/quiltdetails.htm

Here's a short glossary to initials:

GAR- Grand Army of the Republic (the largest Union veteran's group)

WRC- Women's arm of the G.A.R., the Women's Relief Corps

UDC - United Daughters of the Confederacy)

CSA - Confederate States of America

UCV - United Confederate Veterans

Collecting Civil War reunion ribbons is a nice textile focus.

They are usually silk and need some TLC to survive.



Document and Reproduction: Union Print

It's always a thrill to come across a piece of patriotic fabric. This one in madder colors may date to the actual time of the Civil War but it's also likely to date anywhere from 1861 to 1890. After 1890 madder-style colors became old-fashioned.

The Grand Army of the Republic was the name

 of the Union Army veterans group.

Notice the GAR poster in the window in this postcard about 1910.

The print may have been associated with the War as a patriotic Northern image or it may date from the  Centennial in 1876 when numerous patriotic prints were made to celebrate the re-union of North and South.

For my Moda collection Civil War Reunion we copied the madder orange colors in the original and re-colored it in bright blue and buff shades as well as madder brown and madder red.

I hope to find re-enactors making clothes for toddlers and shirts for soldiers from this print.

A "Living Flag" at a Union Army veteran encampment in 1908

The black and white photo of people wearing blue and red has been recolored.

We would be unlikely to find a similar print for the Confederacy as the North had the printing factories, while the South had the raw cotton.

Here's another patriotic print we reproduced a few years ago.

The original was in a top from the 1840s or '50s.

And this one was in a block cut from an antique quilt that had fabrics from about 1840 to 1880. Notice the flag stripe in the brown triangles. Three of those are the document print and one (the darker one is the reproduction.) The original is probably from 1876.

See more about Centennial-era patriotic prints in this post:

http://siputflash.blogspot.com/2010/04/centennial-prints.html