A Union Quilt: Definitions & Descriptions

"Union" on a quilt about 1860

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-jersey-union-quilt.html

In 1863 nurse Adeline M. Walker thanked the ladies of Portland, Maine, for their "Union Quilt" donated to the hospital in Annapolis. What did she mean by a Union quilt?
See the post here:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-union-quilt-at-annapolis-hospital.html

Unknown woman wearing a Union banner

 The name was in the air during the Civil War.

Jennie Hamilton of Harrison County, Ohio, won a 25 cent prize

for a Union Quilt at the county fair after the war in 1865.

In 1861 Ellen M. Nelson of West Newbury, Massachusetts, won a $2 second prize for "a Union Quilt, with five hundred and fifty pieces, made in six weeks" at the Essex County Fair.

Perhaps this Ellen M. Nelson Poore (1843 - 1918) buried in West Newbury.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Poore&GSiman=1&GScty=59915&GRid=103259265&

In 1864, Mrs. William Paul of Dedham, Massachusetts, won a diploma at the Norfolk County Fair for her "union quilt, 1895 pieces."

These last two Union quilts seem to have a notable number of pieces. Perhaps the words Union quilt meant something like a charm quilt or postage stamp quilt with many small pieces.

Quilt dated 1862

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/05/1862-crib-quilt-doh.html

Robert Barry Coffin, writing under the name Barry Gray, published a humorous magazine sketch of "Model Young Ladies" during the war, which was republished in his Castles in the Air: And Other Phantasies in 1871. The model ladies included "The Union Young Lady:"

"Her 'fancy work' is embroidering presentation flags for departing regiments, and quilting a 'Union quilt,' formed of red, white and blue silk; but as she refuses to disclose the name of the happy individual who is destined to sleep under it, we will not seek to penetrate the secret."

Here a Union quilt means a silk quilt in flag colors.

Perhaps something like this one, about which I can find nothing

other than a photo floating around on the internet.

In 1866 the periodical United States Sanitary Commission Bulletin discussed a flag quilt/Union quilt.

"Sometime in April [1865], we received from a county town a quilt made in the form of a flag---red and white stripes and a blue field with the white stars sewed on, all nicely quilted....a note attached requesting the solider who had the comfort of sleeping under this Union quilt to acknowledge it."

J.B. from the 202nd Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers did acknowledge the gift in May, 1865:
"The first night the flag quilt was spread over me, I did dream of the loved ones far away..."

The phrase continued after the War. 

In 1892, the Ohio Practical Farmer's "Exchanges" column included a request: "Will Ilka who gave pattern of Union quilt last October, say how large the blocks are and what pattern she usually outlines on the white blocks; also how many blocks for the quilt? M. L. Venice, O." I haven't found Ilka's pattern or any reply to the request yet.

In 1880 Annie Saffer of Philadelphia won a $2.50 award at the Pennsylvania State Fair for a "Union motto quilt, stars and stripes quilt."

And then there is this style of four-block eagle, called a "Union Quilt" by Ruth Finley in a 1929 magazine article. Finley, born in 1884, may have heard the term growing up in Ohio.
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-jersey-union-quilt.html

I think the only conclusion we can come to is that the words Union Quilt were in use during the war and after and that the definition was diverse.

Detail of a quilt by Elizabeth Holmes in 1869

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/03/elizabeths-holmess-union-star-quilt.html

Sage Bud---Coordinating the Blocks

Joanne's Sage Bud

I've been collecting photos of your Sagebud block (#9 in Westering Women)

Maminounid

ColvinKiwi

Star2tia

JJan added more seams to avoid Y-seams.

getting the same block if not the same look.

I found a variety of looks.

When I Photoshopped them altogether it wasn't the most coordinated quilt. So I tried some design tricks to get a calmer look.

One way to pull things together is to alternate a simple block

with the same proportions. Here I did a digital sketch

of a nine patch constructed like the Sagebud....

Creating a coordinated quilt out

of some of your coordinated blocks.

Another design trick is to do a counterchange shading

with one block light on dark and the alternated block dark on light.

To do that I Photoshopped Jeanne's block

by "inverting" it and fooling with the color.

The dark border also pulls things together.

I added a digital border of "Patterson Park" from

my Baltimore Blues line (it's not all blue).

Not really to scale but you get the idea.

Disaster at the AntiSlavery Fair & a Quilt for Abby Kelley Foster

Women staffing the tables at the 1864 Metropolitan Fair in Manhattan

The ladies of West Winfield, New York, put on an antislavery fair in 1846 (I'm assuming it was in the fair season around Christmas) that resulted in a building collapse recorded by correspondent J.C. Hathaway of in the Antislavery Standard newspaper and picked up by other papers.

A summary:

"The fair was held in the upper hall of a local building "trimmed in the most exquisite manner.... Everything was in perfect keeping.

But at 7:45 on the first evening:

20th-century floor collapse scene

"TERRIBLE CRASH!! THE HALL HAS GIVEN WAY! NO LIVES LOST...
Two thirds of the floor of the hall has just given way, and that men, women and children, tables, and all their beautiful contents, all went down in one confused mass. It was all the work of a moment---the terrible crash of the timbers---the bursting of the camphene lamps---the smoke---and the screams of many voices...The only wonder is that many lives were not lost...."
All the tables containing the dry goods and fancy articles were in that part of the hall which gave way---and delicately wrought card-baskets, and beautiful needlework and rich embroidery...were indiscriminately trampled under foot.

A 19th-century floor collapse

"The most melancholy part of the whole affair is the fact, that the out-door gentry immediately rushed to the scene of action, and amid the general confusion bore off nearly all the money...and also carried off more than half the goods.
A subscription was commenced yesterday for a bed-quilt, worth $8.00 to be presented to Abby Kelley Foster---and more than $5.00 subscribed and paid in, but the paper and money fell into the hands of the freebooters...."

Abby Kelley Foster (1810-1887)

This March, 1847, reference to a quilt for the antislavery activist Abby Kelley Foster indicates the New York women were considering giving her a gift---perhaps the $8 was meant to buy the fabric or to buy a finished quilt at the fair. The newspaper article indicated they immediately began raising money again after the dust settled.

See another reference to a quilt for Abby Kelley Foster at this post:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-anti-slavery-quilt-from-everettville.html

Read more in the Ohio abolitionist newspaper, the Anti-slavery Bugle, March 05, 1847, Image 3, at the Library of Congress site Chronicling America:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/1847-03-05/ed-1/seq-3/#date1=1836&sort=relevance&date2=1922&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn83035487&index=0&words=quilt&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=quilt&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2

Many of Foster's papers are available online. I did a search at this site for the words quilt or bedquilt and found nothing.
http://www.worcesterhistory.org/library/afk-digital/

2017 Block of the Month: Yankee Diary

Next year this blog will feature a free Block of the Month pattern called Yankee Diary. Each month in 2017 you'll get a pieced or applique pattern for a Civil War reproduction sampler inspired by several patriotic quilts from the time.

I've been reading the diary of Caroline Cowles Richards who worked on many quilts in Canandaigua, New York, in the 1850s and '60s. She wrote about them in her diary, which also gives us insight into life for fortunate girls in the mid-19th century.

 Civil War era tea party in Richmond, Virginia.

As Carrie Richards discusses the coming of the War in her town we'll be stitching stars and stripes and dogs and flags. You may recall we did a Dixie Diary quilt a few years ago, focusing on Sarah Morgan's Louisiana  journal A Confederate Girl's Diary.

Moose Bay Muses version

of the Dixie Diary

Carrie and sister Anna

We'll go to upstate New York for our time travel in a Yankee Diary. Sarah and Carrie begin the War in parallel fashion, a little bit spoiled, a little bit self-absorbed. Both matured under very different circumstances.

A few of the inspiration blocks for Yankee Diary

You'll have to wait till next year---the last Wednesday of January,

which is January 25, 2017---to see the first block.

We'll discuss color schemes and fabrics before then.

Spared and Shared: Sewing and Cricket Coverings

Sewing, ironing, cleaning and other women's work

About 1910

Letter from Mary Ann (Arnold) Stevens to Olivia (Arnold) Hitchcock

Westminster West [Vermont]
August 31, 1846
"I suppose if you were here, you would inquire what I find to busy myself about? It is true I have an easy time comparatively speaking. I am released from those domestic cares which I used to take when at fathers. Yet you know that a minister’s wife is not entirely free from care. More is expected of her than of a doctor’s wife, or farmer’s wife. A great responsibility rests upon her and if she feels interested as she ought, she fill find enough to do.

Sewing Society about 1875

"The sewing society meets once in two weeks. They are now preparing to send a box away, not dreaded, when they meet here this week. They have quilted four bedquilts since I have been here. Miss Sawyer & her scholars pieced & quilted one."

Sewing Group 

About 1900

"How does your society flourish? I suppose you have not been able to meet with them. They are expecting a fair in the other parish in a few weeks.
I have made my traveling bag into cricket coverings. Mr. Briggs of Hun made them — charged $2.25. They are handsome but rather dear."

Mary Turley Robinson

Nantucket Ottomans, Crickets and Quilt 1938

Nantucket Historical Association

http://www.nha.org/

At first I assumed cricket coverings are to protect the garden plants. Or was some game of Cricket going on in Vermont?
Then I stumbled upon a print of ottomans and crickets and now I see a cricket is a subcategory of what we around here call footstools.

$2.25 was indeed a lot of money for upholstery services!

Historians love the minutiae of everyday life---the small details whether it's crickets or patchwork.

I found these two letters on Spared & Shared, a blog "Rescuing History from Old Letters One Page at a Time. "

https://sparedandshared2.wordpress.com\

Do a search. You might find someone you know.

Another letter from New England about upholstery:

Nashua, [New Hampshire]
January 26, 1848: Anne Eliza Shepard to Maria Leavitt (Burns) Mack
"have commenced some black patchwork of silk & velvet for chair seats. Mrs. Crosby of Lowell told me that those old fashioned chairs of which grandmother had a half dozen would be very suitable to cover & she would think that each of the sisters would like two of them.... Mrs. Crosby has an old chair fitted up & covered with some patchwork that Frances made...."

https://sparedandshared2.wordpress.com/letters/1848-anne-eliza-shepard-to-maria-leavitt-burns-mack/

Repeating the Westering Women Blocks

Westering Women: Chimney Rock, 72" x 72"

Rod's Chimney Rock

VesuviusMama added more seams----no Y seams.

Block 8 wasn't easy to make but if you made 25....

And alternated light and dark shading like...

Block 8 Chimney Rock by Becky Brown

and Block 8 By Terry

You'd have a lovely quilt.

You need 25 12-inch blocks. See the block pattern here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/08/westering-women-8-chimney-rock.html

Add a 6" floral border. I used the same Old Cambridge Pike print Terry used in the center.

An EQ7 sketch

12" blocks

5x5 grid

6" finished border = 72" x 72"

Cut the 2 side borders 6-1/2" x 60-1/2"

The top and bottom 6-1/2" x 72-1/2"

#8320 Lydian from Old Cambridge Pike

If you had 2-1/2 yards and cut the border first

you'd have lots left for fussy cutting.

There would be 8 prints in the alternating blocks

so a yard of 7 each would give you extra for fussy cutting.

Hill & Hollow, 72"

Or try 25 of Block #6 with 2 different shadings.

I Photoshopped RCCheryls

And TrueCompOO's 

into one very nice-looking quilt.

See the pattern for Hill & Hollow here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/06/westering-women-6-hill-and-hollow.html