Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Helen Korngold Quilt


Helen Korngold Quilt

Close to 10 years ago I found a 1919 diary in a little flea market shop in south Lansing. It was a pricey $15, but it was completely filled and the first entry compelled me to read more.

“Rise 11:30 AM! Oh, such a spiffy time last night: a regular N.Y. Eve. All dolled up in stain clown suit. E.E. proposed—tough luck! Fellows came at 3 AM today—Sam, Dewey, Morris and Sumner Shapiro. Dewey’s Bostonian friend called. We had lots of fun. All good fellows. I’m sleepy—too much champagne!”

The diary was written by Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO.


Helen's photo as a teacher in a school yearbook

Helen was studying to be a teacher. Her history professor offered a Helen fellowship and a position as his private secretary. Helen was a student teacher at the Wellston School and at Maplewood High. She did not like teaching at Wellston. After teaching there as a substitute she regretted not accepting the position at Maplewood High. “Wells came out he said I made a successful teacher, said I understood children.” After graduation she taught at the Wellston School.

Helen wrote about WWI solders, including Dewey Pierre Flambert who won the Distinguished Cross and Legion of Honor, and in 1920 was listed on the census as a Private First Class in the U. S. Army General Hospital in Colorado. She was quite smitten with Dewey while he visited St. Louis, and sought after information about him after he left for Kansas City, then New Mexico, on his way to the coast. “Dewey certainly caused a sensation,” she wrote, “Beat it with $20 gloves and overcoat –I should worry. He was best company I ever had!”

Her special friend was Sumner Shapiro. “He’s lots of fun,” she wrote. She shared several favorite books with him, “Without Benefit of Clergy” (which he did not care for) and “Return of the Native”.  They visited the War Exposition. “He’s a nice fellow! A good teaser. He’s a Bostonian propagandist. I love St. Louis!”

Helen went to chop suey joints, ‘slummed it’ by visiting ‘low class cafes’ like Hop Alley, and danced at the Arcadia. She was up late, rose late, and took afternoon naps to keep up. One night found Helen ‘joy riding’ with Morris Block, her brother Karol, and Sumner, “Morris with his feet hanging out of the machine once or twice & Sumner behaving like a postman and Karol speeding.” 

Along with her music studies and band participation, Helen enjoyed basketball, swimming and canoeing—but most of all loved to dance. She enjoyed going to the amusement park at Forest Park Highlands, once home to the largest roller coaster, The Comet.

Clothes were important. At the Union Masked Ball with Sumner, Helen dressed as Cleopatra in a ‘wicked’ beaded dress in lavender and yellow with black and white. She describes buying a dark blue beaded georgette dress, a peach blow evening dress, black jersey silk petticoats, silk stockings, a green silk dress with silver lace, a blue suit trimmed in fur, suede pumps, dresses in black tricolate and blue velvet, and white georgette plainly embroidered.

On December 31 she climbed the Statue of Liberty That evening she heard ‘La Forza del Destino’ performed by Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle. She had to visit "Lord & Taylor, Altman’s, Macys, etc.” and bought a seal ‘cootie’ hat.

“This certainly has been a most exciting and pleasant year for me. If grandpa had only lived it would have been perfect. Wishing myself and all those I love happiness—Helen Korngold


I researched about Helen's life, using ancestry.com and St. Louis genealogy website. In 1920 Helen was living in St. Louis, MO with her family. Jacob B. Korngold was 56 and a manufacturer who was born in Austria. His work took him on many travels. Helen's beloved brother was Karol Abraham, who became a lawyer after his service in WWI.




I decided to make a make a quilt for Helen. I scanned diary pages and printed them on fabric. The quilt is made to look like pages of a book. The diary page scans are surrounded by a crazy quilt border incorporating old handkerchiefs, lace, old buttons, and scans of postcards of Helen's Alma Mater,  Central High, and other St. Louis scenes. The pages are hung together by strips of lace. And empty ‘frame’ is missing Helen’s picture as I did not find one until recently.

The quilt appeared at the Women’s Historical Museum in Lansing, MI as part of a juried show created by the Capital City Quit Guild.




Monday, February 27, 2012

Pride and Prejudice story book quilt


My first semester at Temple University I took a course on literary criticism. The professor told the class we should be sure to take three courses. Each was an honors course: John Milton, James Joyce's Ulysses, and a year-long, two semester course on Jane Austen. I took them all before my graduation in 1978. 

Joyce was not my favorite course. I was the only female in the class. The guys all liked to puzzle out Joyce. The professor was a Freudian. Still, I managed to get an A based on my 50 page paper on Bloom in Nighttown, with a Jungian interpretation. 

I came to really enjoy John Milton. I think I bored many a person with my yammering on about him. 

But Jane Austen I loved. I have read all of her books, complete or not, many times since then. And it is great that she has become so well known thanks to the many movies and television mini-series on her books.


                                                          Little Women quilt



After I made Marian Cheever Newton Whiteside's 1952 Storybook pattern of Little Women I was inspired to try my own Storybook quilt. I chose Pride and Prejudice. I researched images for inspiration: art, fashion plates, dance instruction books, and 19th c book illustrations. I turned the images into line drawings to base my patterns on. 





Each block shows an important scene from the novel. The sisters Jane and Lizzie; Darcy telling Bingly that 'she's tolerable enough' as Lizzie overhears; Rev Collins brashly introducing himself to Darcy; Lizzie visiting Charlotte Collins; Darcy's cousin telling Lizzie how Darcy saved Bingly from an unhappy marriage; Darcy rushing off to intervene between Willoughby and Lydia; Darcy handing Lizzie his letter of explanation that reveals how Willoughby seduced his sister Gerogiana; Lizzie realizing she loved Darcy and would never see him again; a triumphant married Lydia returns home; Darcy's aunt confronting Lizzie about being engaged to Darcy; and Darcy proposing to Lizzie.




I was uncertain if I liked the pink background and blue border on this quilt. So I did another version, all in Redwork!

Here is Lydia with Willoughby and another soldier.


And here is Darcy flanked by Bingly and Bingly's sister.


Some day I hope to make another Storybook quilt. I have Pinocchio and two other Whiteside patterns. Or I may make my own favorite book again!

Update: Patterns for the Pride and Prejudice quilts are now available at my etsy store Rosemont Needle Arts found here.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

The Road Goes Ever On



The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien was my husbands favorite book when I met him, and remains so to this day over 40 years later. I read it for him in our early marriage, but I found all the battles and male bonding rather dull. When I read War and Peace back then, I skipped all the war scenes, so you can see I was more into personal relationships than old-fashioned swashbuckling romance. When the movie series came out, I reread and saw all the movies with my husband and son... several times...

My favorite character is Sam, Frodo's stalwart friend who stays by his side and becomes the true hero. I love it when simple people like the Hobbits turn out to be the sort of heroes that are needed, not the military or political leaders! The impact of world wars on England is very evident in the series. The people of England were surely true heroes during those embattled days.

My husband's favorite poem from Tolkien is The Road Goes On and he asked me to make a quilt with it. I turned a Tolkien color painting into an embroidery pattern. The completed embroidery sat around for years because I did not know how to finish the quilt. Finally, I just did the simple thing and added a Jenny Beyer border print. I machine quilted the background following the horizontal lines in the fabric. So the quilt is finally finished!!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentines Quilting!




This week I made another quilt based on a vintage greeting card design and embellished with hankys and buttons. I did something new with the binding: I used a wide lace! I really like how it turned out.

I scan the greeting card into my computer and use Adobe Photoshop to crop the image and turn it into black and white, turning up the contrast to get something close to line art. I size it to what I want and print. I then trace the image onto my fabric and embroider it. For this quilt, I added several border in 1930s reproduction prints. This is when I hand quilt. Then I used sheer handkerchief corners to embellish the borders, hand tacking them down. I bound the edges with the wide lace, the same way as traditional binding.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Handkerchiefs and Old Lace







Some years ago I started making collages with vintage hankys and other handwork items. I embellish with buttons, pins, tatted gloves, ribbons and trim--- anything I can find. I love making these small quilts.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A Year in Review






I have not added to this blog for over a year. But I did accomplish a lot during this time. I moved. I adopted a dog. Our son graduated from college. And we are preparing for another move this summer!
I also took up decorative painting and joined a book club.
Catch up on quilts: I designed a quilt for a wedding, based on their invitation graphics. It has a floral vine in applique and embroidery and is beaded.I designed and appliqued and am quilting a Princess Feather quilt. I used bright colors as requested. I made a kitten baby quilt. I learned to make purses and did about 12.I completed a quilt hop quilt. I also started several quilts that are sitting around as tops or blocks, waiting completion.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Completed Quilt!






I finally finished "I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet", celebrating the women who worked for abolition and Civil Rights.

In keeping with the old fashioned look, I quilted it in a modified Methodist Fan pattern.