September 18 – 23, 2003
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These restored messages come from the Quilt History List, an online forum where quilt historians, collectors, researchers, appraisers, and enthusiasts discussed antique quilts and related textiles. The archive dates from 1996 through approximately 2016 and is being restored gradually. Sign up in the form at the bottom of the page if you want to know when a new page is added. Original spelling, opinions, formatting, and inactive links may remain unchanged.
Primary topics of this QHL Digest:
- Copyright vs. Trademark for Book/Pattern Titles — The plagiarism thread continues into a broader discussion of what copyright and trademark actually protect, including pattern and book titles.
- Nancy Cabot Pattern Research — A member searches for a specific Nancy Cabot newspaper pattern design named for Stonewall Jackson.
- Confederate Personalities in Quilt Block Names — A running thread catalogs quilt blocks and patterns named for Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, and debates whether more should be designed.
- Hurricane Isabel Check-ins — Members along the East Coast report on how their areas fared as Hurricane Isabel passed through.
- Newark Museum Quilt Extravaganza — Registration details are shared for an upcoming quilt event at the Newark Museum. (see the article on quilt museums)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:10:51 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: “jocelynm@”
I really would be interested in hearing the story behind this one. Copyright protects original work, and I don’t see how a common phrase couldbe attributable to one person’s original work. OTOH, trademark refers to a phrase that’s uniquely associated with a partic ular product. I suppose someone could try to trademark it, but since it’s n ot exclusively associated with one product, I’m not sure anyone could trade mark ‘shabby chic’, either.
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:10:51 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: “Nancy Gibbs” <izannah1@>
<,OTOH, trademark refers to a phrase that’s uniquely associated with a particular product. I suppose someone could try to trademark it, but since it’s not exclusively associated with one product, I’m not sure anyone could trademark ‘shabby chic’, either. >>
Yes, “shabby chic” is trademarked (not copyrighted). Rachel Ashwell wrote a book back in the mid ’80s about this style, and then developed a whole business around it–bedding, slipcovered furniture, decorative items, more books, etc., etc. There are some stores too (maybe just in California??). The cable show is hers also, although I’ve never seen it. So no one else can use the term as a trademark, but I’m not sure that extends to the sort of common use in conversation to describe a style.
Date: Thu, 18 Sep | From: danabalsamo@
Hi all, For those of you that requested the Registration Forms for the Newark Museum Quilt Extravaganza: I have received them from the museum and they will be mailed out Friday morning. If anyone else is interested, just email me you address and I will get one out to you. Hugs, Dana
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:29:59 -0600 | From: Xenia Cord <xenia@>
Not to horn in on Sue’s delightful historical entries, but I ran across this and thought it might also resonate:
The Prayse of the Needle
To all dispersed sorts of Arts and Trades I write the Needles prayse (that never fades) So long as children shall begot and born, So long as garments shall be made and worne, So long as hemp or Flax or Sheep shall bear Their linnen Wollen fleeces yeare by yeare; So long as silkworms, with exhausted spoile Of their own entrailes for man’s gaine shall toyle; Yea, till the world be quite dissolved and past, So long at least, the Needles use shall last.
-John Taylor, 1580-1653
Consider that cotton was not a commercial product in Europe when he wrote this!
Xenia
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 12:55:34 -0400 | From: <mreich@>
Xenia, This is not my territory alone. I think it is wonderful when we have something this great and we share. sue
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:32:31 -0400 | From: aol.com
Just one tiny correction: cotton *was* a thriving industry in Europe during the Renaissance, at least in Italy. There were cotton guilds in virtually every major city, many associated with quilters’ guilds. There was even a special type of striped cotton woven specifically to back bed quilts.
There’s some excellent information in Maureen Mazzaoui’s =The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1600. The end notes in particular are excellent, and well worth reading for the look at the thriving quilting industry of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Hope this helps –
Karen Evans Easthampton, MA
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:30:19 +0000 | From: pkeirstead@
Please continue to send me your name if you’re interested in joining our new group. However, I’m going on vacation until Sept. 29, so I won’t reply to your e-mails until after that date.
Peggy Keirstead pkeirstead@
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:30:19 +0000 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
Does anyone have a set of Nancy Cabot designs containing the design for a quilt pattern named “Stonewall Jackson, listed (“#1061.5) in B. Brackman’s patchwork book as being a Nancy Cabot design or pub’d by Nancy Cabot?
Thanks, Gail
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:48:17 -0600 | From: Xenia Cord <xenia@>
Ok, I have looked at a ba-zillion newspaper cuttings from Cabot and Wheeler (lord, women loved to cut and save that stuff!) and not a Stonewall Jackson in the bunch. It occurs to me that even in the 1930s, the title may have stirred up old animosities, and so the design was given a pass.
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:48:17 -0600 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Jody Pickens
I am new to the list and very interested in quilts and history. Does the Dear Jane quilt qualify as an historical quilt? I attended a Quilting School at bestsew.com and the Brenda Papadakis was the featured quilter. The quilt was so unique.
Jody
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:48:17 -0600 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: “Patricia Magyar” <magyars@>
Hello friends-Christine’s right-the title of a book cannot be copyrighted nor the title of a song. I researched this when I wrote my book on Drunkard’s Path way back when. I wanted to call it ‘Happy Trails’ and found that several books have been written over the years with that title, including one put out on hiking by the Sierra Club!
Now that the DP book’s in print again with Dover Books, its title is the much drier ‘65 Variations on the Drunkard’s Path Pattern.’ Speaking of drier–we’re very lucky here on the coast in NC. Isabel roared onshore about noon today after blowing a gale for ten hours before. Although there was some shingle loss and branches down (the pecan will never be the same-) we’re out of the woods. The power came back on at 7PM, just in time for a tasty dinner of Spam fillets with Swiss cheese topping. Ummmm-hurricane food–all the salt and fat you can eat! Pepper Cory (just to the left of the Cape Lookout lighthouse)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 21:41:17 -0500 | From: Gail Ingram <gingram@>
Thanks, Xenia. I think ESPECIALLY in the ’30’s. In the late 40’s that war was very real for my grandmother Rice. I also think this is a peculiar thing—no Lee block. It interests me. I wonder what colors were recommended, out of curiosity.
gi
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 08:08:33 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Donald Beld
Hi Gayle, I know you have seen my version of the “Stonewall Jackson” quilt referred to in Brackman. I have not found the original Nancy Cabot yet; but I will tell you that my impression is that it is not a whole quilt, as my version is; but rather is a border.
It is also my impression that it derives its name from the lack of sashing, which gives the background fabric (especially if used as a border) the appearance of an old fashioned “stone wall”.
I am making a second version of my quilt–as I sold the first one as soon as I finished it (but have retained possession until the second one is done). My second version will have the middle of the stars the same fabric as the background. I call it “Job’s Crown” based upon Chapter 19 from the Book of Job. I am doing it in a gray background and center with a turkey red inner ring on the stars and an alternating indigo blue outer diamond on every other star and a gold on the others. They are the “most perfect” 19th Century Civil War era fabrics I have ever used. I just hope it doesn’t take me three years to make like the first one.
If anyone else has an opinion on the composition of this quilt, I would love to hear it.
P.S., as far as I know, this is the only block/quilt pattern named for a Confederate. No Lee, no Jefferson Davis exist as far as I know. Don Beld
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 08:08:33 -0400 | From: “Patricia L. Cummings” <quiltersmuse@>
While the source of the following poem is unknown, it’s word resonate even today. Pat
17th CENTURY NUN’S PRAYER
LORD, Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all; but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends in the end.
Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; Give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of other’s pains, but help me to endure them with patience.
I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessing cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally, I may be mistaken.
Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint- some of them are hard to live with- but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.
Amen
Writer unknown
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 [date inferred — source gave only “Fri,” with no day/month/year] | From: QuiltAlive@
> “Stonewall Jackson, listed (“#1061.5) in B. Brackman’s >
Are you sure that is the correct Brackman number? –Merikay
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Joe Cunningham
I have received the Leta Shulte Grant from the Fort Mason Foundation to mount a quilt show from June 28 to August 11, 2004. The show will take place at the Herbst International Exhibition Hall here in the Presidio, a National Park in San Franisco. The show , “The Life of a Quilt,” is intended to demonstrate my particular vision of the tradition of quiltmaking. That is, as a quiltmaker, I am most interested in how they are made, and how they have been made for the last couple of centuries in America. Accordingly, part of the exhibition will be my “How to Make a Quilt Wall.” Starting with the raw fabric, the successive exhibits wil show the fabric all cut up, the blocks being sewn together, the top being assembled and, finally, the top installed in a frame with me quilting at it, so I can teach people the quilting stitch, conduct tours and answer questions throughout the show.
The second main part of the exhibition will be a section called, “Freedom in Tradition.” It will be intended to show how some traditional quilts were created spontaneously, with a high degree of improvisation, even when the quilters were working with an existing pattern. For this part of the show I am seeking antique quilts made by quilters working freehand to create traditional patterns. It has been my observation that as old quilts are transcribed and reproduced for publication or teaching, they have been cleaned up, made symmetrical and flattened out. I am seeking the originals, where one can tell that the quilter was working to make a pattern like Wild Goose Chase, but made it freely, cutting and sewing each piece without the benefit of accurate templates or patterns.
I first got interested in this area by teaching myself to quilt freehand. Studying my favorite old quilts anew, I saw that many seemed to have been quilted without having been marked. Once I got started, I saw I could quilt cables, feathers, cross-hatching or any other design freehand and my quilts would look more like the old ones I treasured. Of course the majority of 19th century quilts were carefully sewn and marked for quilting. I am not looking for those, or for crazy quilts sewn with random patches. I want to show the ones where quilters seemed to piece, applique or quilt without first marking the fabric.
If anyone knows of quilts like this and would consider having them shown in this exhibition, they could email me pictures at Joe@. I would love to hear from you on this or any other quilt topic.
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 [date inferred — source gave only “Fri,” with no day/month/year] | From: seater@
The October issue of Down East magazine lists in their event calendar an exhibit that I hadn’t heard about before. Anyone been? Know if quilts are included?
Through Oct 27 at Colby College Museum in Waterville ME, SPNEA (Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) tours its renowned collection of fine and decorative arts. “Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy” features 175 objects ranging from paintings and furniture to needlework, ceramics, costume, jewelry, photographs and textiles. (207) 872-3228 www.colby.edu/museum
Susan Seater, Raleigh NC (where Isabel was barely felt beyond closing school for 2 days) & Deer Isle ME seater@
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 01:16:16 -0400 | From: “judygrow” <judygrow@>
Our new issue of M.A.D. contains only one image of a quilt, and that is on page 1-D in an article titled “Mid Week in Manchester”. The quilt is indeed a showstopper, as they call it, even in badly reproduced black and white.
The quilt is an album of 36 blocks with a large 6-block-size block (vertical) in the center, with a vine border, small wreaths at the corners. (6 blocks by 7 blocks plus border)
The caption says only that it is a memorial to a horse, but does not give a date or the name of the horse. The quilt is on consignment to the dealer who showed it, and the owner wants $32,000 for it! End of information.
Three blocks alternate, a peacock, a wreath and a horse, and the blocks turn left and right at the mid-line to keep bi-lateral symmetry. The center block looks to be the horse under an arch of flowers — the winners circle? It is hard to see.
Does anyone know this quilt or where it can be seen in color? I can’t find it on the MAD web site, and I’ve never read a reference to it anywhere before. I’ve called the dealer and left a message, but haven’t gotten an answer — yet, if ever.
Judy in Ringoes, NJ judygrow@
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 08:21:33 -0500 | From: “Marcia Kaylakie” <marciark@>
Hi All, Knowing what a wonderful group this is, I wondered if some of you might have some articles/books etc on feedsacks. I need them for something I am working on right now. Thanks, Marcia Marcia Kaylakie, AQS Certified Appraiser Austin, Texas 512/502-0383 www.texasquiltappraiser.com
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 10:18:22 -0400 | From: Judy Roche <jrocheq@>
Please send Registration Forms for the Newark Museum Quilt Extravaganza to Judy Roche PO Box 202 Solebury PA 18963 Thank you ! Judy
danabalsamo@ wrote:
>Hi all, >For those of you that requested the Registration Forms for the Newark >Museum Quilt Extravaganza: I have received them from the museum and they >will be mailed out Friday morning. >If anyone else is interested, just email me you address and I will get one >out to you. >Hugs, >Dana >— >You are currently subscribed to qhl as: jrocheq@. >To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-qhl-1458669E@ > > > >
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 10:44:56 -0400 | From: Joan Kiplinger <jkip@>
In addition to Anna Lue Cook’s Textiles Bags book, you might want to get a back issue of Dress, the CSA magazine, Vol. 19, 1992 for one of the finest articles written on feedsacks — Recycling Feed Sacks and Flour Bags: Thrifty Housewives or Marketing Success? Story by Loris Connelly
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 08:25:35 -0700 | From: <chrisa@>
HI MARCIA,
There was an excellent and in depth article written on this topic one or two years back, written by Loris Connolly titled RECYCLING FEEDSACKS AND FLOUR BAGS: Thrifty Housewives or Marketing Success Story? Loris works at the MN Historical Society. As I recall, but can’t say for sure, It may have been printed in DRESS journal from the Costume Soc. of America.
Kimberly Wulfert www.antiquequiltdating.com
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 12:43:23 -0400 | From: Joan Kiplinger <jkip@>
Marcia — In addition to Anna Lue Cook’s Textiles Bags book, you might want to get a back issue of Dress, the CSA magazine, Vol. 19, 1992 for one of the finest articles written on feedsacks — Recycling Feed Sacks and Flour Bags: Thrifty Housewives or Marketing Success? Story by Loris Connelly
Marcia Kaylakie wrote:
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 | From: “Cinda Cawley” <lrcawley@>
Just want to let you all know that the Eastern Shore was spared the worst of the storm This was my first experience of a hurricane in a place that’s totally flat and surrounded by water–pretty scary. We ended up with lots of (very big) branches all over the yard (but not on the house) and consider ourselves very lucky. Cinda still here on the Eastern Shore
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: “Teddy Pruett” <aprayzer@>
<<P.S., as far as I know, this is the only block/quilt pattern named for a Confederate. No Lee, no Jefferson Davis exist as far as I know. Don Beld>>
Oh, what a horrid realization!!! I do think that we should gather together and rectify this situation, doncha know?? Gail – anyone – don’t you think we should DESIGN one to fill the void?????
Teddy
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
Yes, Teddy, I do believe we should design a block in remembrance of Lee. I’ve spent my life reading about him, ruffling through archives, even saw his devoted horse Traveler when he was a skeleton at Washington & Lee (they finally buried him, merci dieu). Just finished two new biographies and reread his son’s recollection. I have the Lee coat of arms framed (Not unmindful of the future–non incautus futuri), the first painting I ever bought was a portrait of Lee (not so great, but costly) as a gift for my husband when we were in grad school and it took my month’s salary plus some. I admire Lee immensely. He is the only person I’ve continued to read about in whom I found no grievous flaw. He was what he seemed, something out of style now, a Christian gentleman. He and Jackson believed until just a day or so before it came to pass that VA would be able to avoid secession. They knew what all those yahoos further south who were whooping war up as a chance to win glory–that, to loosely quote Lee, ‘It is well war is so terrible. Otherwise we would be tempted to indulge in it more often.’ After the war when Lee was offered high-paying jobs to sit on the boards of northern companies, he turned them all down in favor of going to little Washington College (now W & L), where the regents had to combine their funds to buy one decent suit for the delegate they sent to visit with him and make him the offer. It was not a glorious position, but he believed education was the path out of the devastation that was the South of that day. And he believed he should model what he believed.
So yes Indeed, let’s do a Lee quilt.
After reading two Jackson bios within the last six months, I also admire him greatly. What a combination, the Tidewater son of a Revoluatinary War hero fallen on hard times —Episcopalian (though never baptized), contained, courtly; and the fiercely independent Presbyterian Scots-Irish frontiersman who defied a town to establish a Sunday School for slave children which also taught them to read (Jackson never failed to send a donation to that group when he go his salary check). They were held together by devotion to a common goal and a common God, though Jackson’s was more the Old Testament one.
This would have to be one heck of a quilt, Teddy, to live up to its subject.
Gail
I cannot bring myself to get excited about Jefferson Davis, whom I consider a meddler who had to control every military action. Both Lee and Jackon had to work their way around him, Lee with delicate diplomacy, Jackson acting like he hadn’t heard him or gotten his message.
What about getting outside Va and doing Hood of Texas, whose ragtag bands Lee once named the fightingest men under his command. They were the plain folks and beloved by everyone who ever encountered them. They also were reputed to be the most imaginative cussers of the Confederacy, no small achievement.
I have a motto to use as inspiration for a Lee quilt. It is the closing section of “Lee in the Mountains” by the Nashville poet Donald Davidson. It is a dramatic monologue and in these lines Lee is addressing the cadets at Washington College, encouraging them to take the values of their faith and their land and plant them anew in a new generation. I know few lines this side of Shakespeare and Milton with such cadenced, controlled power.
“Young men, the God of your fathers is a just And merciful God Who in this blood once shed On your green altars measures out all days, And measures out the grace Whereby alone we live; And in his might he waits, Brooding within the certitude of time, To bring this lost forsaken valor And the fierce faith undying And the love quenchless To flower among the hills to which we cleave, To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee, Never forsaking, never denying His children and His children’s children forever Unto all generations of the faithful heart.”
Teddy, you are always thinking, aren’t you! This is a good idea. A terrific idea.
Poor Lee, left in our hands……. Gail
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
Teddy,
If I lived next door to you or even down the road, we would never get anything done. We could build us a playhouse, something on the order of yours but perhaps with a few literary trappings. The world would not be safe.
But I really think you are right about these Southern quilts. First, we need to see if there ARE any quilts named for Lee and company. I’ve spent lots of hours just mulling and looking in museums such as the Valentine and have seen nothing. Most focus on the 17th-18th century heritage.
And Hood would be such fun! He was a live wire, a frontiersman who, I think, was illiterate or thereabouts but a leader par excellence! A Texan whose troops could out-cuss anybody in the confederacy.
Gail
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Donald Beld <donbeld@>
Hi, I h ave received several e-mails about additional Confederate personalities that have quilt block patterns named for them–Brackman has one for Robert E. Lee, and Eleanor Burns has several. When I said I know of no others, I meant contemporary or vintage, i.e., early 1900’s patterns.
That is not to degrade Brackman’s or Burns’ patterns. I think part of our great tradition is designing patterns or using old patterns in new ways and naming them. I am working on a quilt that uses a modified Job’s Tears pattern that I have named for Rosa Parks, who I think is the great “common” person with uncommon courage of the 20th Century.
It is this tradition–the meaning behind pattern names that interest me so much about quilt history. Don Beld
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
Too late, Don, Teddy Pruett and I are going to redeem Lee and company—maybe Hood with his cussing soldiers (those call for feedsacks) in the bargain. The South is rising.
gi
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Kris Driessen
Marcia,
Our own quilt history website (http://www.quilthistory.com ) has two articles on feedsacks, one written by Jane Clark Stapel and one written by me. Both Jane and Barb Garrett helped with that one:-))
Kris
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Joan Kiplinger <jkip@>
You can find everything you need it Costume’s website, including ordering of any of its Dress back issues. http://www.costumesocietyamerica.com And yes, Kris pointed out another good source, Jane Clark Staple’s feedsack booklet.
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:18:15 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
> I h ave received several e-mails about additional Confederate > personalities that have quilt block patterns named for them–Brackman has one > for Robert E. Lee, and Eleanor Burns has several. When I said I know of no > others, I meant contemporary or vintage, i.e., early 1900’s patterns. Don Beld >
Don, Would you share the information you have rec’d re Confederate quilt blocks?
Like you, I am more interested in the vintage blocks, for it shows contemporary esteem. Yet it is also interesting ot see how that esteem is retained through the years, as in the Stonewall Jackson pattern, which I believe is essentially the same one shown and used on the cover of the VA Quilt Museum book. It’s maker, an inlander, named it “Mariner’s Wheel” I think. Members who have searched their Nancy Cabot files do not find it there, though Brackman lists it as being a Nancy Cabot pattern. I suspect this pattern was issued in “Progressive Farmer,” a popular magazine publ’d in B’ham. There, the Cabot pseudonym was changed to “The Spinning Wheel.” That reveals a continuing interest in Jackson and the Civil War that continued—and continues—in the South. And, especially in Jackson, to whose untimely death many attribute Appomattox. Had Jackson lived is still the big “if” among some historians and many lay readers.
In what fabrics will you do your Rosa Parks quilt? And such a good choice of pattern—Job’s Tears, the old Southern name for this pattern that is also called prettier, less powerful names like Periwinkle! If your pattern permits, I would love to donate a piece or two from scraps I saved from garment construction in that era. Have you seen the movie “The Long Walk Home” with Sissy Spacek? I think it evokes the complexity of that time. What an interesting and deserving project!
Gail
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:18:15 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Joan Kiplinger <jkip@>
For those who are interested in Vintage Fashion magazine, some follow-up news: I called this morning to see when the second issue — September — would be out. According to a staff person, issue is “still in negotiations with printer.” Not quite sure which way to digest that answer. Also, there is no website as of yet nor have any agreements been reached with book chains to have magazine on their stands. Those who want to be put on mailing list can email fashionreporting@ or phone editorial offices at 718 601-0396.
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:18:15 -0400 | From: Beth Donaldson <quilts@>
Check out our website to find two quilts that are named for Robert E. Lee. http://www.museum.@/glqc/MarySchafer/leesrose.html
Also, did you know Rosa Parks was a quiltmaker as well as a seamstress? You can see one of her quilts and read an interview with her about her quiltmaking, beginning on page 132 of African American Quiltmaking in Michigan by Marsha MacDowell, ed. You can purchase this book at: http://35.8.122.90/MTAPStore/category.asp?time=104029&category=QOT.
Beth Donaldson Quilt Collections Assistant Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum 201 Central Services East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1045 quilt line: 517-432-3800 quilts@ http://museum.@/glqc/index.html
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:18:15 -0400 [date inferred — no Date: header in source] | From: Gail Ingram
Beth, Thanks for the reference to the site. Do you know where the original of this quilt is now located? and who the maker was? where the reproducer saw it?
Lee’s wife hosted a daily quilting gathering throughout most of the war. Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis’ wife, was a regular. Many of the quilts were made for auction/sale. Some were made for soldiers. Many, many southern boys went off to war with special quilts made by their mothers and relatives especially for the occasion of their departure. And I’ve never encountered a southern woman’s journal during this period in which some mention was not made about a quilt being made for “selling chances.”
Gail
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 [date inferred — source gave only “Mon, 22” with no month/year — unambiguous within this page’s date range] | From: JBQUILTOK@
> > If anyone involved with this list starts designing quilt blocks & naming them > for old Civil War heroes (South or North), I hope they are extremely careful > to make sure they are always clearly labeled as ‘designed in the 21st > Century’. We’ve fought the battle against the UGRR myth too long to > carelessly start > a myth of our own! > > Janet
Clearly, as Don and Beth have noted, folks have been designing quilt blocks and quilts and naming them for their heroes, heroines, and causes for almost as long as they have been quilting.
One of the most revered quilts in my family home was an album quilt my mother and her eight sisters and brothers had made as a gift for their mother. Their signatures, stitches, and choice of blocks and colors reflected not only their own personalities, but also the woman who all alone had seen them through most of their young lives and somehow sent them to college or professional training from the proceeds of a small farm and pine timberland. She was their heroine, and anyone looking at that quilt knows it and has some idea of the values and devotion she instilled in the makers. My grandmother had entrusted it to my mother, probably knowing she had initiated the project and knowing also she would see that it lived on through other generations.
Numerous books and articles (e.g., “They Couldn’t Vote, but…” Vibert/Girard; “Hearts & Hands” Ferraro/Hedges/Silber) detail the ways in which women engaged the worlds of politics and society through quilting, often memorializing their own heroes in quilt blocks and quilts which have been copied by generations of American quilters.
So the practice of designing quilt blocks and naming them and/or the quilts they comprise for heroes or heroines has been going on for a long time, and reproducing or modifying those designs is also a part of the American quilt tradition. Don Beld, for instance, recently made a quilt using a pattern published in the 1930’s and named for Thomas J. Jackson, and yet it is clearly a quilt of our time. His decision to use darker, more masculine reproductions of fabrics from the mid-19th century stamps it as singular and 21st century. Beth’s posting regarding the Strickler reproduction of a Lee Rose quilt makes clear that the reproduction of older quilts is a commonplace in quiltmaking history..
There are many reasons to seek to recognize a person in an art form, but generally they go to the person’s most salient characteristics or historical or personal significance. Whether represented abstractly or more realistically through applique, the decision to recognize these qualities in reveals much about the maker and probably also about the age in which he or she lives.
I believe I am the one who started this thread by inquiring about a quilt pattern named for Stonewall Jackson. I had just completed the compelling biography of Jackson by James I. Robertson, which had made me understand and appreciate things about Jackson that I had missed before, though I had read about him for much of my adult life. This is the first “full” biography and it shows a man who in many ways has much to say to our own time, to me, as a Southerner and an American and a person committed to duty, piety, and an independent spirit.
Finishing that biography made me wonder whether Jackson had been memorialized by a contemporary quiltmaker. It struck me as odd—and now odder still, since no contemporary versions have turned up—that someone in the great Valley of Virginia would not have found him an appealing project. There, Jackson loomed larger than Lee.
That is an interesting question I intend to pursue about Lee, Jackson, and others. Its anwer and the reason a pattern named for Jackson surfaced in the Great Depression will reveal something about what his life meant to those he served and to their descendents.
That Don Beld would have made a Stonewall Jackson quilt and is now planning (if only in his imagination, still) a Rosa Parks quilt suggests something that might be the answer. Both were plain people (Jackson was Scots-Irish and Lee seems to have been one of the lone exceptions to his distaste to Tidewater Virginia aristocracy), both were independent, both were deeply religious and committed to their people and to a democratic view of the world. And each did the impossible.
It has occurred to me that for many on our list the word “Confederate” has ominous connotations. Yet, when one studies history closely and reads the letters and journals of the time, he cannot avoid the notion that both Jackson and Lee fought for Virginia, to defend their native land and their families. Each was shocked when members from the Deep South seem ecstatic about the prospect of secession. They had fought in Mexco. They knew the cost of war, and they were ardent unionists until union simply was no longer possible for Virginia. Lee’s father had been the most popular military figure in the Revolutionary War, the one who had coined the phrase “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen” to characterize G. Washington.
Lee’s wife’s family, the Carters of Arlington, were related to Martha Washington and owned the prized set of Washington china. Her father’s will freed his slaves through an onerous process that led Lee and his sons to devote years of labor to paying off debts of the estate so they could accomplish the terms of the will . Lee himself freed his slaves. Jackson defied Lexington, Va, and state laws to establish a Presbyterian Sunday School to teach the gospel and literacy to slaves so that they might read the Bible for themselves..
The facts of these men’s lives are thoroughly documented, particularly following the Robertson biography, and so it would be unlikely that a spurious myth would arise from a quilt such as Don’s or any similar quilt made or design created by anyone else.
The Civil War was a terrible war, one that tore families and nation apart and left the South decimated economically and physically until WW II. Even in the 1960’s, one could fly over Sherman’s route from Atlanta to Columbia and Charleston and from the air clearly see the path of of his army’s destruction and ruin.
And even in 2003 those of us, black and white, for whom the South is a generations-long home love our homeland, warts and beauty marks included. In an age of the anti-hero, of Enrons, and of a complex war and politics, perhaps we turn to an earlier time to define ourselves and our values more clearly. Either abstractly or otherwise, our quilts will embody courage, duty to one’s own land, and sacrifice of self. They will have at their heart the motto that graced the Lee family crest: “Not unmindful of the future.” and of Lee’s statement, “Duty if the sublimest word in the English language”. That is what both those men were about.
In other words, these were no Confederate-flag “Love it or leave it” bumper-sticker types. But they were Confederates. It would be a shame if pc precluded their virtues being memorialized and publicized in quilts for rising generations.
Personally, I want to check very carefully to determine to what extent quiltmakers of their own time remembered them in design.
Gail
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 22:12:26 -0700 (PDT) | From: Donald Beld <donbeld@>
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I had several people e-mail me privately about patterns named for Confederate personages. I hope none of them mine my sharing them with you all.
Cuesta Benberry (what an honor to have her e-mail me) confirmed that the Stonewall Jackson pattern in Brackman’s book came from Nancy Cabot and was printed in the Chicago Tribune on 4-23-33. She also states that Ladies Art Co listed a Stonewall Jackson pattern in 1890 as “170 Stonewall”, but discontinued the pattern in the second decade of the 20th Century because it was a “poor” seller.
Cabot’s Stonewall Jackson is not attributed to an actual quilt or who designed it; but I think my conclusions about the connection between the background looking like a Stonewall with Blazing (Virginia) Stars superimposed on it is correct.
Connie Ark was kind enough to e-mail me about an actual quilt made by Mrs. Mary Custis Lee (Mrs. R.E. Lee) called Lee’s Medallion that is current in the possession of the Virginia Military Institute. She made it to raise funds for the Robert E. Lee Memorial Church in Lexington. Barbara Brackman’s Lee’s Medallion is a modern version of that quilt and the pattern for it can be obtain through ReproductionFabri@.
Eleanor Burns (quilt in a day fame) has a book out that I think is called Stars across America or something like that that have many patterns named for famous people–some of them Southerns. Some are contemporary to the personage patterns like Barbara Freitchie Rose, Dolley Madison Star; but some are modern designs that she has made and named such as Sojourner Truth, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Tubman, etc.
As for my Rosa Parks quilt, I am using 19th Century repro fabrics (that basically is all I work in) in a turkey red background and an indigo blue chain one way and a white chain the other way. In the middle of the quilt, I intend to break the chain by leaving out two links and quilting in Rosa Parks’ name to represent her breaking the chains of segregation. I consider Rosa Parks the Barbara Freitchie of the 20th Century (yes, I know Barbara Freitchie wasn’t really the person who held the Union Flag out her window; but she was a real person and a real patriot and the poem represents a real event).
Curiously enough, the great quilting tradition of designing patterns and making quilts to honor great Americans kind of died out after WWII. The last pattern I know of for a famous American is a Jimmy Carter block, so the ground is fertile and ripe for us all to continue this great tradition. Happy quilting, Don Beld
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 22:26:43 -0700 (PDT) | From: Donald Beld <donbeld@>
Okay, I got to thinking, while we having been talking about the Confederate quilt personages blocks, we should give equal time to the Union people. Besides Barbara Freitchie Rose, I show a Lincoln’s Platform, Sherman’s March, Tad Lincoln’s Sailboat, and Garfield’s Monument (Garfield was, of course, a Union general) although his block obviously is a memorial block for his assassination.
Two wonderful trivia comments about Garfield are 1) he was the last incumbent Congressman to be elected President of the United States and 2) he was the leader of the draft Sherman movement and the convention turned to him when Sherman gave his famous, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve” speach; so Garfield’s assassination was a quirk–it could have been Sherman.
To the best of my knowledge there is no Grant block, no Stanton, no Andrew Johnson, no other Northern personages. Let me know if you know of any. Don Beld
