The Name on the Quilt

A few months ago the editors at The Quilt Life Magazine asked me:
What was the most surprising thing I've found out in quilt research?
I had to think for a while and I decided the answer:  
I've been most surpised by the differences between what we call a 19th-century quilt design and what the quiltmakers called it back then.

What would you call the pattern pictured above?

This quilt from the collection of the Shelburne Museum confirms a name I probably would use for this pattern. Another name I'd use would be Democrat Rose.

We don't know much about pattern names before 1890 when magazines and quilt pattern companies really began to publish them as a way to sell patterns. But some earlier quiltmakers like Charlotte A. Raynor actually recorded the name on the quilt.


Most of the examples I've seen over the years, however, do not confirm my idea of what the pattern is called. The Arizona Quilt Project found a similar quilt to the one above. The maker Sarah Gear appliqued her name and the words "Odd Fellows Rose" in the border. (See their book Grand Endeavors, page 187 for a photo of the quilt.)

How about an indigo star like the block above?

The Illinois Quilt Research Project 

found a quilt assembled  from old blocks

 like this one. In the border is appliqued:

Jackson*Star*Quilt*Made*1849

I don't know of any other patterns named for Andrew Jackson. This might be the only one.

For a picture, see page 60 in the Illinois project book: History From the Heart

I might call this pattern Missouri Rose or Love Apple or Pomegranate.

On the reverse of this one is inked:

Mississippi Beauty

Judith Connor's Quilt. Presented by Jane Shelby,

Feb the 10, 1855

The quilt is now in the Winedale Collection at the University of Texas.

Click here to see the file in the Quilt Index with a photo of the quilt.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4F-88-CA

And here's

"The Peony and Prairie Flower"

by Parnell Grumley, dated 1847,

in the Shelburne collection.

The block might be the peony,

the border the prairie flowers.

How about this pattern?

I really don't have a name for it

because I don't think I've ever seen it before.

Clarissa Strong did us a favor when she created the border in 1854, telling us it's "The Indiania Fancy Quilt." The quilt is in the collection of the Indiana State Museum. Read more about their collection at the WomenFolk webpage by clicking here:

http://www.womenfolk.com/quilt_notes/indiana-quilts.htm

Years ago I saw an unpublished quilt in this pattern. Badly burned, it's fortunate that it survived at all. The applique pattern is one we'd call Prince's Feather---or is it Princess Feather? It really doesn't matter, because on the face of the quilt it says: Kossuth's Feather

Lajos Kossuth was an extremely popular figure in the 1850s, a Hungarian political activist intent upon overthrowing the rule of the Austrian Emperor in his homeland. In exile, Kossuth traveled the world raising funds for his revolution. A magnetic speaker and handsome man, he toured America 1851 and 1852.

Like all publicity-conscious revolutionaries, Kossuth wore a dramatic costume. His was topped with a large hat and a larger feather. The Kossuth feather became a fashion statement. I've never seen another reference to the revolutionary name for a pattern we identify with royalty.

Read more about the history of the pattern at Karen's blog posting:
http://karenquilt.blogspot.com/2010/12/red-and-green-part-1.html

And click here to see a pieced quilt with the pattern name "Ladies Ramble" on it at the Bergen County (N.J.) Historical Society:
http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/collections/LadiesRamble1876.2.jpg
Read more about it here by scrolling down:
http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/BCHScollectionsRV.html


So when people ask me what is the "correct" name for a quilt pattern I just have to say: "There is no correct name for a quilt pattern." That surprised me when I figured it out years ago. Now I just shrug and say, "Whatever you want to call it."

Does This Stripe Make My Quilt Look Fat?

Strips and stripes from various online auctions and other digitial sources

Botch Handle/Devil's Claws

Or why I never get anything done around here....

Botch Handle quilt 

Shown in Quilting Traditions: The Art of the Amish,  from the collection of Tom and Marsha French, at the Dairy Barn last summer. 

Bonita writes:

Recently took in an exhibit of Amish Quilts at the Dairy Barn in Athens, OH. Wonderful collection in a most perfect setting! I was curious about one quilt named "Botch Handle". Looked it up in your Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns and found it also called Lily and Des Moines. A friend of mine said she knew it as Devil's Claw. So, do you have any clue as to why or how it came to be titled Botch Handle and what it may mean?

I could have said all I know is in that Encyclopedia. Even though I wrote it 30 years ago, I haven't found much new about quilt pattern names and their sources since then. The name Botch Handle comes from Robert Bishop and Elizabeth Safanda's Gallery of Amish Quilts. I do not know their source for the name, but it is used commonly now for Amish quilts in the pattern. I could have said that.

But no-o-o-o, although I should be mulching the roses I started looking at the whole picture.

In the Encyclopedia I listed several published names for the design (#2058a and 2058b) with Bishop and Safanda's being the most recently published. About 1900 the Ladies Art Company, a pattern sales company, published it as the Lily Quilt Pattern and Hearth and Home magazine published it as Des Moines. In 1934 the Kansas City Star quilt column suggested you embroider your name across the center in album quilt fashion and called it Cluster of Lilies. A smaller source the Needlecraft Supply Company published it in 1938 as Pond Lily.

. 

#2058a

The Amish may very well call this Botch Handle. I don't know a thing about Amish language. I guessed botch might be a German word, but I looked in several dictionaries and found it as an Americanism. In the 1830 American Dictionary of the English Language Noah Webster defined a botch as

1) A swelling on the skin
2) Patch
3) The part of a garment patched or mended in clumsy manner, ill finished work in mending.

Which is still the same meaning we attach to botch. So what is a botch handle? A bad repair?

For more botched automobile repairs click here:

http://www.automechanicschools.net/blog/40-worst-diy-car-repairs

As far as the Devil's Puzzle Pattern. It's similar, also based on four stars.

#1952

This pattern was published as Devil's Claws by the Ladies' Art Company.

Other names include Idaho Beauty and Cross Plains.

The name Devil's Claws refers to a number of plants with spiky parts, particularly a South African creeper

with an alarming seed pod.

There are probably many American plants also referred to as Devil's Claws, so we can imagine that is the source of the Ladies' Art Company name. (Roseanne sent a link to an American Devil's Claw plant that grows in the western U.S. http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_prpa2.pdf )

Quilts in both designs go back to about the 1890s, the time when the Ladies' Art Company started selling quilt patterns.

See four vintage versions of the Botch Handle/Lily made by women who were not Amish by looking at these references from the Quilt Index.
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=51-8C-20A
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-6F
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-129 
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-75C

Well this was more fun than mulching the roses, and maybe someone who has interviewed Amish quilt makers can tell us more.
Me. I'm getting back to my sewing room and finishing a  botchwork quilt I've been working on.
P.S. Chris Jurd sent a photo of her recently finished Devil's Claws

See her blog:

http://www.chrisquilts.blogspot.com/

UPDATE on November 29th in the afternoon.

Someone in the Comments said that her grandmother used the term Botch Handle for what your grandmother might have called a meat tenderizer. I found some pictures of antique tools. Now we know what a botch handle is and why the pattern would be called that. Thanks.

Election Day

V is for VOTE!

Or maybe Victory as in this World War II era quilt from the collection of Cindy Rennels

The pictures are from an exhibit at Quilt Festival this week in Houston.

Cindy is a quilt and textile dealer from Oklahoma who has collected patriotic quilts from the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Detail of a sampler from the mid-19th century

Detail of a mid 19th-century star

Detail of a Whig's Defeat with chintz sashing

A quilt from the WW I era

See Cindy's website by clicking here:

http://cindysantiquequilts.com/

Not So Current Events

My friend Merikay sent a scrapbook page with a sketch of another Garfield's Monument pattern. See my post on this pattern on September 28th by clicking here: http://siputflash.blogspot.com/2010/09/intepreting-old-patterns.html

This may be the original publication of the monument style block. Wilene Smith thinks it might be from Farm and Home in the early 1880s right after Garfield's assassination.

Note there isn't much information on how to make it. You wouldn't want to applique all those right angles but there are no seam lines. This might be why there are so many variations. Everyone drew it differently so they could stitch it. No two quilts seem to be done in the same pattern.

Merikay has just been to visit Garfield's Monument and sent vintage postcards along with the scrapbook page.

Garfield's Monument, Cleveland

The glass mosaic in the ceiling is on the left.

See an EQ exercise using a Garfield's Monument block:

http://www.electricquilt.com/Users/FunStuff/MysteryQuilt/SkyLights/lesson09.asp

This is the kind of thing we can spend hours on---and do.

But the point I wanted to make here is....

I noticed on the same scrapbook page two designs named for Dewey.

The Dewey Dream Quilt and the Dewey Quilt, a reference lost to many of us today.

(The Dewey Dream is in lower left corner; Dewey Quilt in top right corner above)

Admiral George Dewey (1837-1917) was known for winning a battle in the Spanish-American War in 1898. He certainly was a victor in the propaganda battle as my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns and the digital version BlockBase show 5 designs named for the Admiral or his wife.

Left to right:

Mrs. Dewey's Choice

The Dewey Block

The Dewey

Dewey's Victory

as well as my version of the Dewey Dream Quilt shown on the scrapbook page.

But on the scrapbook page I see there is another Dewey Quilt.

The Dewey Quilt

That is one wacky block.

It was easy to draw in EQ though. I realized it is based on the Maltese Cross construction.

With one line in every arm missing.

I just deleted those lines and recolored it.

And look how great it looks as an all-over pattern.

Pop test today:

Who was Admiral Dewey?

How fleeting is fame?

Intepreting Old Patterns

Here's a quilt advertised in the past year or so on an online auction as a "Birthday Cake."

Does that say Dad in the lower right hand corner with a date of 1928?

I hate to spoil the party but the pattern was not meant to be the least bit festive.

It appeared in the Ohio Farmer magazine about 1890 with the name "The Monument." It was a memorial pattern. You could put Dad's name in there and the date he died.

Here's another one recently advertised as a "Birthday Cake."

The quilt top looks to date from about 1900 when the maker might have had access to the magazine with the design.

Or the pattern may have been passed around and modified a bit.

Here's one in somber tones, a slight variation with a curved top to the grave stone.

Quite a few were made.

Skinner Auctions advertised this one as Wedding Cake or Garfield's Monument

The blue and white example, again from about 1900, is based on another published pattern.

The Ladies' Art Company sold quilt patterns in the 1890s and called this one "Garfield's Monument."

It commemorated President James Garfield who was assassinated in 1881.

The patchwork pattern may have been inspired by his tomb and monument in Ohio.

It's always easy to interpret quilts through our own culture and forget about the culture of the past.

Garfield's death was, as we can imagine, a traumatic national event.

See another "Garfield's Monument" quilt in the Quilt Index by clicking here:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1F-3E-7 

Birthday Cake by Bobbi Finley, 2009

Designed by Barbara Brackman

Not that a birthday cake quilt is a bad idea.

Just don't jump to conclusions in interpreting long-ago quilters' intent.