Medallion Club at C and T Publishing

November will mark the last chapter in the digital club that I have been doing for C&T Publishing this year. In Clues in the Calico: America's Earliest Quilts we've been building medallions around a central star block over the past 11 months . Above is my version of the center.

The club gives you a variety of authentic borders drawn from America's earliest quilts. Shown are two options. The October issue featured instructions for the Orange Peel border, outside edge on the right. September had the pattern for the Swag & Leaf border, outside edge on the left. November's chapter will include authentic period quilting designs for early patchwork.

Bobbi Finley stitched the quilt top below, using the Hartfield collection of English reproduction prints I designed last winter for Moda. Bobbi used a very British brickwork border for her outside frame.
Hartfield Medallion by Bobbi Finley, 2008

Denniele Bohannon made the version below with an outer zig zag border, a pattern often seen in the early quilts.

Too Spicy by Denniele Bohannon, Harrisonville, MO, quilted by Louise Lewis, Rich Hill, MO, 92” x 92”, 2008

Although the last installment will be posted soon, you can always subscribe to the digital club and use it like a book rather than a monthly installment. Go to C&T's Club page to find information. Click here:
http://resources.ctpub.com/eClubs/siputflashsCluesintheCalicoClub/tabid/122/Default.aspx

We'll keep the installments on line there for quite a while. You can download the chapters and patterns to a disk or print them out once you've paid your $19.95. Each installment includes a lot of information about early quilts and early fabrics in addition to the patterns.

Click here to see a trial issue:

http://resources.ctpub.com/eClubs/siputflashsCluesintheCalicoClub/Issues/Issue1ChintzBroderiePerseQuilts/tabid/135/Default.aspx


Above: a center section on a design wall I found in cyberspace. I think it is from Kim's Big Quilting Adventure.

Early Quilt Design

I recently received a note from the Honey Barn, a shop in Iowa, wanting information about quilt patterns that would have been in use during the Revolutionary War. It's a question I've been interested in lately. I gave her the references below about medallion quilts. Above are two medallion quilts from Cynthia Collier.

The earliest patchwork quilts in America only date to the 1780s, which is still the Revolutionary Era. Block-style quilts were rare and most quilts are made in the medallion format. On my web site on the Quilt History page I deal with early quilts at the bottom of the page. I have links to some of the earliest dated quilts and then a few patterns for Jane Austen era needlework. Click here:
http://www.siputflash.com/faqs2.aspx

In my book America's Printed Fabrics: 1770-1890 I have a section on the "Fabric of the Revolution" with a pattern for an early medallion. And I do an e-Club for C&T Publishing this year with monthly chapters about early quilt fabric and style (1780-1830) plus a pattern for a medallion border for a period look. Click here: http://www.cluesinthecalico.com/

And one last medallion from Jenifer Dick who used the fabric she hand dyes to great effect. Above the finished quilt; below the center in progress.

More Medallions

Here' is Pam Crooks' medallion top for her friends' challenge using the Uwa reproduction fabric, the same challenge that inspired Cindy Vermillion Hamilton's quilt. I think the fabric in question is Pam's border here.

Yesterday's post elicited several questions and comments, among them:

Do you have [medallions] in your collection? Can you give us a little history about medallions?

I have two antique medallion quilts but they are not the greatest. I do have a lot of photos of reproduction medallions. I've been collecting snapshots to post in the gallery of my e-Club for C&T, which this year deals with early quilts especially medallions. Check it out at http://www.cluesinthecalico.com/

As far as a history of medallions. Here's an excerpt from Chapter 2 in that club:
"Early quilts often have a central design focus, a setting style Americans tend to call medallion quilt and the British call framed quilt or frame quilt. The terms seem to date only as early as the twentieth-century, possibly established in 1929 by quilt historian Ruth Finley who described a quilt with a tree-of-life center as a "framed medallion" in her book Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them.

Although women working after 1840 were likely to use a block format, earlier quiltmakers preferred the medallion set. On my website I maintain a list of eighteenth-century quilts with the date actually on them. (See it by clicking here: http://www.siputflash.com/faqs2.aspx) Of the 14 quilts in which I could identify a set or style 11 were constructed with a central focus (about 80%). Of quilts date-inscribed in the 1840s I found the opposite; 80% were block-style, a dramatic style shift in the century's first decades."

....And as Homer Simpson would say "Doh!" I didn't realize that if you clicked on the pictures here they get larger! So click on Pam's quilt. Wish I had a better photo.