Quilts, Books, Book Club, and More News

My Little Red Ridinghood quilt is completed. It is hand embroidered and hand quilted. I used 1918 Redwork patterns and 2019 fabrics by Riley Blake. I am eagerly awaiting Riley Blake's new fabric line Dorothy's Journey featuring the Wizard of Oz!

My weekly quilt group has decided on doing a group quilt project. We are making blocks for a teapot quilt. My block is hand appliqued.

My weekly quilt group had the challenge to bring in your first quilt. I brought in my second quilt, in which I used my mother's painting smocks.

I have two quilts hanging in the Blair Memorial Library. Morning Glory is hand appliqued and hand-quilted, my second applique quilt, from a Quiltmaker Magazine pattern. It used hand dyed and commercial fabrics.

Years ago I signed up for a block of the month to make a bed-sized stained glass look quilt. I only finished six blocks! So I made this wall hanging now in the library.

Our library book club's June book selection was The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash. Wiley visited our group via Skype. Everyone enjoyed the book and learning the history of the Loray mill strike. It was especially interesting to hear Wiley talk about how a writer creates a compelling narrative out of historical fact. Read my review here.

The Troy, MI library hosted Drew Philp for his last author talk before beginning a new job and writing project. Drew's book A $500 House in Detroit drew a good audience of people who were fascinated by his story. Read my review of his book here.

My husband ordered me a book for no reason except he thought it would appeal to my interest in history, biography, and the history of cooking. Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen: A Culinary View of Lincoln's Life and Times by Rae Katherine Eighmey is enjoyable to read--and it has recipes.

Since I last shared my TBR shelf it has grown! 

Wickwythe Hall  author Judith Little, a novel set in 1940 based on history 

14th of September  from author Rita Dragonette, a novel set in 1969's antiwar movement 

Country by Michael Hughes from LibraryThing, the Illiad reimagined in Northern Ireland

Threads of Life: The History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle by Claire Hunter, the history of how women expressed themselves through sewing

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen from The Quivering Pen blog debuted at number two on the best-seller list!

 This spring we are feasting on the lettuce we grow in our garden.

And the enjoying the beautiful flowers, like the Pink Drift Roses below.

and the little teacup rose that I thought would die outdoors but which is brimming with flowers.

Our lavender and daylilies and hydrangeas in bloom.

Our grandpuppy Ellie had her six-month anniversary since adoption and the end of puppy mill life. She has really blossomed! We puppysat her and she spent the day snooping the yard hoping to scare up the rabbit she had seen last time. She was rewarded--before she went home she got to chase the bunny.

The bunnys were back the next day.

Hidden Treasures: Early Quilts from the Poos Collection

The 100 quilts in Hidden Treasures: Rarely Seen Pre-Civil War Textiles from the Poos Collection are so memorable and gorgeous, antique quilt lovers are warned against heart palpitations and turning green with envy! These are quilts in a private collection. Lori Lee and Kay Triplett have previously shared quilts from the collecting in Indigo Quilts, Pioneer Quilts, Chintz Quilts from the Poos Collection and Red and Green Quilts from the Poos Collection. 

The Poos Collection is one of the largest privately held quilt collections in the world with a concentration on pre-1860 quilts from American, Britain, and France.

Baltimore Album Quilt with Rose Border, American, 1848

The quilts are presented in groupings:

• Album Quilts
• Wool Quilts
• Birds of a Feather
• Starstruck
• Paper-pieced Quilts
• Red and Green Quilts
• Chintz Coverlets and Quilts
• White Wholecloth Quilts

Crewel Curtains Quilt, English, c. 1750s

Early quilts often repurposed textiles. Chintz was a glazed fabric made in India with woodblock printed or painted images. Europeans used the fabric for home decor and clothing. Early Chintz quilts had little piecing, using the fabric whole. Later the naturalistic motifs were cut out and hand appliqued to a plain background.  Crewelwork drapes, quilted petticoats, and other textiles were also cut up to make quilts.

Thrush Family Crewel Quilt, English, 1810

Pictorial applique quilts often include images important to the quilter, her historical setting, and contemporaneous historical events. These quilts are not only a thing of beauty but also offer insight into other times.

The Veray Settlement Table Cover, c. 1820, includes intarsia, applique, and embroidery on wool to depict the history of the settlement. Intarsia is one of the earliest techniques found in pieced textiles. Over ten pages, each panel is reproduced and the image's representation explained.

The Sarah B. Dales Damascus Mission Quilt, American, 1854, consists of blocks with beautifully inked drawings and names, sew together 'pot holder' method. In this method, individual bocks were layered, quilted, and bound off,  then sewn together to form the quilt. The presentation quilt was given to Miss Dales before leaving to be a missionary teacher in Damascus.

Wholecloth Quilting is the oldest style, dating to the 13th c. Sometimes the quilt top was made of printed fabrics. Most are white with white quilting, sometimes with stuffing between the stitches to raise quilted motifs, called trapunto. Photographing these quilts is problematic as it is hard to show the elaborate stitching. The images in this book are excellent. I appreciated the use of backlighting to better show quilt details.

The Applique Gone Wild Coverlet, English, c. 1825, combines applique motifs with pieced blocks and cut-out chintz motifs. 

In the 1820s English Medallion style quilts had layers of pieced blocks and squares, triangles, and rectangles of fabrics. 

English Paper Piecing is one of the oldest quilt methods Fabric is sewn around a paper template and the shapes stitched together. The technique is in revival with contemporary quilters. I was very inspired by the fussy-cutting use of printed fabric motifs in the Lewis Family Hexagon Quilt, American, 1825-1850. 

Hexagon Diamonds Quilt, American 1850 is a paper pieced quilt

The Rose Sampler Quilt, American, 1860, has an improvisational quality and a personality all it's own. The medallion-type setting is off center, the outer border bud motifs are each different. It is a quilt that brings joy to the viewer.

I thank the collectors and authors Lori Lee Triplett and Kay Triplett for sharing their amazing collection through this book. Follow their blog Quilt & Textile Collections at https://www.quiltandtextilecollections.com/blog

This is a 'must' for your personal quilt history collection!

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hidden Treasures, Quilts from 1600 to 1860: Rarely Seen Pre–Civil War Textiles from the Poos Collection
Lori Lee Triplett and Kay Triplett
Available on July 1,  2019
Book ( $39.95  ) eBook ( $31.99 )
ISBN: 978-1-61745-807-1
(eISBN: 978-1-61745-808-8)

Poems for the Very Young Child: Summer

Today I am sharing summer poems from Poems for the Very Young Child, compiled by Dolores Knippel and illustrated by Mary Ellsworth, Whitman Publishing Co., 1932

Helen Korngold Diary June 23-29, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

In 2001 I discovered a diary in a Lansing, Michigan shop. I was charmed by the writer and brought the diary home with me. I spend years researching Helen Korngold. This year I am sharing the diary every week along with my research notes.

Helen recently graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

June

Monday 23

Riding

Tuesday 24

Unexciting

Wednesday 25

Jr. Council Card Party at Highlands. Karol & Hyman took us home.

Thursday 16

Big night. Went slumming. K & Sofie Stampfer – Clara Marx & Hyman Stein – Bill Weiser & myself – we had a wild time – Hop Alley & all low-class cafés.

Friday 27

Cleaned up & slept

Saturday 28

Party at Levy’s

Sunday 29

Ida came over - Aunt B.

NOTES:

June 25

Karol Korngold, Helen's brother

June 26

Hop Alley was the name for Chinatown. It may have gotten that name for the opium addicts, or hop heads. See articles here and here.

Hop Alley in 1925. St. Louis Post-Dispatch

June 28

Mae Hannah Levy (born 1897) appears in the Washington University class of 1918, and was active in hockey, the Woman’s Athletic Assoc, the YWCA and French Club. She appears on the 1916 and 1917 City Directory as a student living on Waterman St. Alfred Levy on the 1920 St. Louis Census is a president of a white collar manufacturing factory. His family included Gussie, son Moe and daughters Mae H. age 23, Adele, and Ruth. Alfred has an ancestry.com family tree. Mae married Perez Falk in 1923 and he died Dec. 11, 1923. The 1930 St. Louis Census shows Mrs. Mae Falk, widow, living with her parents.

The 1900 St. Louis Census shows Perez, age 13, living with his parents Max and Laurie and siblings Kenna and Edmund. Max was a traveling salesman for a hat wholesaler. Perez Falk’s WWI Draft Registration shows he was born July 20, 1886, in Joplin, Mo and worked as a traveling salesman. He had black hair and blue eyes. A family tree on ancestry.com shows she also married Isodore Miller. Mae died in 1981.

June 29

Aunt Beryl Frey, her mother's sister

*****

On June 28 the Treaty of Peace was signed, formally ending WWI.

Note also the article "Women to Attend Ratification of Suffrage Measure"

June 23, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. College pranks.

June 23, St. Louis Post-Dispatch ads include this rather risque photo for sports fashions

And my favorite ad!

Using Newspapers for Patterns

On the free table was a paper bag filled with homemade clothing patterns using newspapers and magazine pages. The pattern for an oven mitt still had fabric pinned to it.

I believe the magazine page dates to the 1950s based on the Palmolive illustration style and the article on the back about WWII Flying Tigers pilot Jack Cornelius.

The photo caption reads, "Stocky Jack Cornelius left an airline job to take over the engineering of the Conest..." The story talks about the Flying Tiger Line founder Prescott hiring the Texan Cornelius who was working for a New York Airline. Prescott started the first scheduled cargo airline and named it for the WWII Flying Tigers unit, a 100 man unit that "compiled the greatest air combat record in history" according to a 1991 article in the LA Times, inspiring a John Wayne movie.

Other pattern pieces were for a child-sized shirt. And there were several heart shapes as well.

 Snippets from the newspapers showed an Indiana connection.

Frankfort, Indiana perhaps?

I loved seeing the vintage advertisements! Roman Meal Bread was promoted as a way to keep thin. Now we are all about low carb diets.

 Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid came out in 1952.

 The television guide line up gives an idea of the date for some pieces.

Frugal sewers are still around. When I started quilting in 1991 I joined a group of quilters who were older with years of experience. One lady used cereal boxes to make her cardboard templates. A friend in my current group uses flexible plastic cutting mats from the dollar store instead of those sold at the hobby stores.