Washington Street Studio Repro Prints

A reproduction of a Prussian blue plaid, ca 1850.

Washington Street Studio from P&B by Nancy Kirk

The good news is you should be able to find some new collections of Civil War era reproduction prints in your quilt shop. The current fabric business is certainly going through a period of change with lines disappearing and reorganizing but there are still some accurate repro prints arriving.

Repro of a sprigged madder calico

I noticed that P&B has a couple of new mid-century collections and I also noticed that the company is owned by a larger converter named General Fabrics Company of Rhode Island. A few months ago General Fabrics was bought by another converter Brand & Oppenheimer Company. (Converter is the trade name for the company that designs the fabric and puts the print, finish etc. on the goods.) The P&B repro fabric arm is called Washington Street Studios.

The industry gossip is hard to interpret --- and kind of a bummer, as we used to say before anybody was really printing fabric for quilters.

Repro of a neat stripe in California gold and madder colors from

Red Rooster

Last year P&B's Red Rooster division was doing some good

reproduction prints but they've closed Red Rooster in 2018.

The Bad News:

This chart updated to May 17th indicates that cotton selling for about 87 cents a pound a month ago has increased 6% in five months.  I'd expect more shake-ups from companies that use millions of pounds annually---

World cotton trade = 38 billion pounds per year.

Mourning the last bolts in an earlier trade war.

(Cartoon From the Napoleonic Wars ca 1804)

Here are some links to P&B current collections:

https://www.pbtex.com/collections/sarah-french-collection by Nancy Kirk
https://www.pbtex.com/pages/washington-street-studio-home

www.pbtex.com/collections/french-paisley-c-1850-70-new