Saturday, December 28, 2013

Pattern Name?

Collection of the Taylor Museum in Arizona

Above is a quilt that looks to have been made sometime
in the early 20th century. The claret red and cadet blue
fabrics at lower right are good clues to the 1890-1920 era.
The bright purple and yellow might indicate the 1930s.

See more about it at the Arizona Memory site:
http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/tshsettle/id/0

The family story that it was made before 1890 seems fairly unlikely because the fabrics look later. The caption says it was made by Margaret Henrietta Baird Camp and donated by her granddaughter, who passed on the family name for the design:

The caption reads:
"In the South, the pattern was called 'The Whig’s Defeat'. In the North it was known as “Democratic Victory".

Interesting? Those names for this pattern haven't been recorded.

I looked it up in BlockBase where it is #3807

The pattern has a lot of published names, beginning
in about 1890 when the Ladies' Art Company sold it as Dutch Rose.
Eccentric Star and Octagonal Star are other often used names.

The design was popular in the 20th century and you see
related patterns going back to the mid-19th-century.

This one with squares in the corners looks to be Civil-War-era. It's BlockBase #3809,
which also has many published names


Carpenter's Star is common
but it's also published as Knickerbocker Star
and Black Diamond.

It's just not known as Whig's Defeat. Could the donor or the museum have mixed up some labels?

Confusing it with a quilt similar to this, which
Florence Peto published as Democrat's Fancy or Whig's Defeat in 1941.

A simple mix-up in quilts and the family name happens every once in a while but the major question I have is how did the page and the pattern come to be called Confederate's Defeat?


"100 Year old quilt is hand pieced and quilted . Pattern is Confederate defeat or
Democratic victory."


Typos in the digital files----facts on the internet.

2 comments:

YankeeQuilter said...

"family names" for a quilt and published names can have no relation to each other! That may be where the confusion started!

BuckleBerrieQuilter said...

I've always known this pattern as "Carpenter's Wheel." Perhaps "Confederate Defeat" is a name given by the family as Yankee Quilter observes. Thanks for the great blog!