Stars in a Time Warp 1: Multi-colored Turkey Red Prints

Reproduction star by Bettina Havig

in Turkey red and shirting prints

Vintage print: Typical imported Turkey red print

from about 1840-1865. 

We'll begin this Time Warp QuiltAlong with stars of Turkey reds. Turkey red is one of the most recognizable cottons in 19th-century quilts. We see it often, either as a solid color or print.

Vintage Turkey red print star.

Note how many different red prints she combined

to make the star. 

Our first stars will focus on the multi-color Turkey red print popular before the Civil War years.

My stars

Turkey red repros by Becky Brown, above and below.

Reproduction print from Moda's Collection for a Cause:

Friendship

Vintage print from 1840-1860

The background for Turkey red prints was always red. The sophisticated printer could discharge (bleach out) white and add yellow, blue, green and dark brownish-black figures.

Rubia Tinctorum,

the vegetable dye for madder colors

The dyestuff is madder root, which rather easily produces a brownish-red. Vivid reds were hard to obtain in cotton.

The vintage windowpane check is madder red, a brownish, orangey-red.

Turkey red gets its name from the old Turkish or Ottoman Empire where dyers used processes they'd learned from India to obtain a bright cherry red in cotton. Turkey red came to Western Europe in the 18th century after French and British dyers sent spies east to learn the process.

Turkey red plain in a 19th-century block.  

Look for a blueish-red rather than an

orangey-red.

Early European efforts focused on plain reds obtained by dyeing the cotton in the yarn, then weaving it into solids.

Vintage two-color Turkey red print

The simplest Turkey red prints were discharged white figures. In 1810 Daniel Koechlin-Schouch of Mulhouse in Alsace, France, developed techniques to add yellow figures in the discharge process. 

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Most of the Turkey red prints we see in mid-19th-century

American quilts have some yellow figures, as in these blocks. Adding the

yellow often gave an orange cast to the red.

In the early 19th century, printers developed increasingly complex processes to add blue, green and black figures to the Turkey red background. Mills specialized in Turkey reds. Towns in England, Scotland, France and the German and Swiss states were home to Turkey red workshops and factories,
but the process apparently was not done in the United States until after the Civil War.

The vintage multi-colored Turkey red print is a good clue

to a date of about 1840-1865.

European dyers offered a variety of backgrounds for these multi-colored prints but American quilters

were crazy about the red-ground prints, which became quite the fashion here about 1840. 

Vintage print

Reproductions

When looking for Turkey red prints to reproduce a pre-1865 look

keep an eye out for bluish-red backgrounds and

figures in yellow, green, blue, white and dark brownish black.

Reproduction print

Reproduction print from AlaCarte by American Jane.

Sandi Klop designs many American Jane

prints in French Provincial style for Moda. She often

has two or three good Turkey red reproductions in a line---

the right reds with multi-colored figures.

They still print Turkey-red-style prints in France.

Pierre Deux is known for their provincial-style

reds...

lots of which are figures set in a regular diagonal

grid, a foulard design. Because they use modern dyes

the figures are a bit brighter than the 19th-century prints

but the style is good.

Cornucopia from Simply Baltimore by Sue Garman

Sue Garman specializes in red and green quilts. 

The red reproductions in her stash always work well.

See her blog here:

http://suegarman.blogspot.com/

Cactus Rose Reproduction Quilt

Pieced, Appliqued by Pam Mayfield and Jean Stanclift,

hand quilted by Ann Thomas. Designed by Barbara Brackman.

For this reproduction quilt we used several red prints sold for clothing rather than quilts. The pattern begins on page 66 of America's Printed Fabrics.

Stars and Squares from Annette Plog's PetiteQuilts on Etsy

https://www.etsy.com/shop/PetiteQuilts

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I found this repro block at the Trkingmomoe blog.

She has captured that very scrappy look.

http://trkingmomoe.wordpress.com/

Lori's reproduction of the Beyond the Cherry Trees

applique quilt uses a red paisley I did for Moda a few years ago.

http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/

Vintage star from an 1836 cradle quilt in

the collection of Historic New England.

(Scroll down to see the whole quilt.)

My interpretation of that star. I cut up a French

Provincial dinner napkin.

Moda includes two good Turkey red plain reproductions in the Bella Solids

collection. The lighter shade is Christmas Red (9900-16) and

the darker Country Red (9900-17)

Setting idea for your stack of star blocks:

Set them side-by-side as in the 1836 crib

quilt from Historic New England.

(Sixty-three 6" stars)

Several years ago Terry Thompson and I interpreted that quilt with

an abolitionist poem in the center star

See closeups of the original here:

http://www.historicnewengland.org/collections-archives-exhibitions/collections-access/collection-object/capobject?gusn=GUSN-10459

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One More Thing about Turkey Red

Turkey red is colorfast. It doesn't bleed onto other fabrics

or fade with light. But damage is common. One of the biggest problems with

antique prints is the way the dark brown figures

start to rot from the iron in the brown dye process.

Sometimes the brown completely disappears

leaving holes with the batting peeking through. Mills use

different dyes today so don't worry about your reproduction browns tendering

(textile jargon for rotting.)

You can see here how the brown is printed atop

the Turkey red and the yellow is bleached out or

discharged.

That tendering won't happen with today's Turkey red

repros---we use completely different dye processes today.

Turkey red stripe as the star's background in a vintage quilt

I'm going to try to capture the look of old star blocks (mostly by trial and error.)

I need a pinker pink here and a stripe rather than a plaid.

Read more about Turkey red in America's Printed Fabrics, pages 62-67.

And in these blog posts:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/02/turkey-red-friendship.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-turkey-red.html