Yankee Notions #6: Improved Nine Patch

Yankee Notions #6, Improved Nine Patch

by Denniele Bohannon, 18" version.

Yankee Notion #6 is the idea of improving things --- from Transcendental spiritual ideas of trying to become a perfect human being to Yankee mechanics. 

Nile's Weekly Register, 1831

We could discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson and philosophical/religious ideas about working on our personal perfection but let's begin at a more concrete level with one of America's most famous inventors and engineers Eli Whitney, born in Massachusetts, died in Connecticut---a Yankee through and through.

Eli Whitney

1765-1825

Most American children of the 19th and 20th centuries memorized Eli Whitney's accomplishment---"inventing the cotton gin." When we were young the engine/machine was lauded as a platform of America's economy; today it's decried as the foundation of slavery. Both concepts are true but the important point here is that Whitney did not invent a machine. He improved a machine.

Catherine Littlefield Greene (1755-1814)

 in her 50s

The story: Whitney went to Georgia as a young man to tutor the children of a plantation family but digressed into his favored activity, Yankee tinkering. His cotton-farming neighbor Catherine Greene was impressed and their collaboration in the early 1790s resulted in Whitney's coming up with a way to mechanically comb the seeds out of the upland cotton she was growing.

The improved gin, a small model.

Whitney never made much money off this machine. His other

inventions and improvements made him rich, however.

Southerners were making an agricultural transition to upland cotton rather than the easier-to-clean but harder-to-grow Sea Island cotton. Mechanics of cleaning the seeds with an engine---a gin--- required a different mechanism. Whitney and Catherine Greene may have discussed a mechanism (she was born in Rhode Island and was perhaps a Yankee tinkerer herself) or she may have just encouraged him with enthusiasm and financial support.

Later cotton gin on the left.

Note the belts connecting it to a power source, probably a water wheel.

The basic Yankee notion was that handwork was inefficient. How to

mechanize it?

Library of Congress

Photograph by George N. Barnard of cotton production at 

Mount Pleasant in South Carolina. 

The above view of labor in the 1870s illustrates the contrast between Yankee concepts of time use and lingering Southern attitudes about employing people to do tasks machines might do more efficiently. But then again---machines put people out of work. The transition to new forms of labor is always difficult.

A Lummus cotton gin (they still manufacture gins) from a company

founded by a New Yorker in 1863.

The Block

Improved Nine Patch by Becky Brown

We know who improved the cotton gin, but who improved the Nine-Patch? Perhaps someone writing about quilts for the farmer's magazine The Rural New Yorker in 1930, so far the earliest reference to the pattern in print.

BlockBase #306

Most Improved Nine Patch quilts are constructed

like a Wedding Ring pattern with squeezed squares and ellipse shapes,

no square blocks.

But we are doing it as a block.

It may be the most difficult pattern in the series as it's made up mostly of curves. You could design your own block---improve a nine-patch in your own fashion (No Y seams, no Curves) but the 1930s version is a cool pattern, and Eli Whitney did not flinch from a challenge.

Improved Nine Patch by Dorry Emmer

You can rotary cut piece A but the others are cut

with templates.

For a 12" Block- Cut 1 A 3-1/8"

For an 18" Block - Cut 1 A 4-3/8"

Tangible Yankee Notion

The Safety Pin

New Yorker Walter Hunt obtained a patent in 1849 for his safety pin. He twisted a piece of wire to form a clasp at one end, a point at the other and a coil in between. The coil pressured the sharp end to stay in the clasp.

Improved safety pin

Walter Hunt 1797-1859

Walter Hunt invented many items including the lock-stitch sewing machine. He was not much of a business man, however. Others improved the sewing machine and made fortunes.

And that's why there is a sewing machine in Dorry's block.

Denniele's sketch, Blocks 1-6.

Becky Collis sends photos of her machine quilting on Denniele's.

See a post about the Improved Nine Patch here:

http://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/01/improved-nine-patch.html

Sylvester Read's Quilt Business

Quilt in an unknown pattern, About 1900,

 70" x 80"

The Arizona project recorded this quilt with many triangles.

Blocks are a little over 5-1/2".

The tans probably were once red:

a red, white and blue patriotic piece.

Quilt Index
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=67-EC-1430

Sylvester H. Read was born in Massachusetts, eldest son of a shoemaker with the wonderful name of Resolved Reed. He grew up in New York, lived a good deal of his life in Knox County, Ohio but continued moving west, settling in Illinois, Iowa and finally in Custer County, Nebraska where the quilt was made.

During the Civil War he enlisted in the 15th Regiment of Ohio Volunteers in August of 1861 and was taken prisoner at the Battle of Chickamaugua in September, 1863. His wife Mary S. Davis Read (1836-1923) was raising their three small children at the time. He survived the prison and the war.

His grave is marked with a G.A.R. veteran's star. He received a pension

and was a charter member of

Custer County's Samuel Rice G.A.R. post.

After the war, the Reads went west. The 1870 census finds the family with five children in Troy, Iowa where Sylvester is working as a carpenter. The children were born in Ohio and Illinois. S.H. Read is recorded as one of the early settlers of Custer County, Nebraska, arriving in Merna from Clarke County, Iowa in the early 1880s. Several if not all of his children also settled near Merna (which is about 60 miles northeast of North Platte. Undoubtedly they were homesteaders looking to prosper as farmers .

Custer County is right in the middle of Nebraska. The 100th Meridian 

runs through the county. On the east side of that line---rain enough to farm with 

19th century technology; on the other.....

Merna in 1886

Solomon Butcher photograph

The quilt descended in the family through their daughter Leila Thomas (1857 - 1932) with the story that it was made in Nebraska by Sylvester as one of a pair. The other was sent as an inauguration gift to President William McKinley in 1897. The family noted that he began to make quilts for income when he could no longer work on the farm.

We'd like to know more about Sylvester Read's quiltmaking business but information is scarce. Information about Custer County, however, is abundant mainly because one of Sylvester's neighbors was Solomon Butcher, a fellow homesteader who decided to become a photographer instead of a farmer.

Solomon Butcher in later life

Photography didn't pay either so Butcher spent his time recording his neighbors. His iconic photographs of Custer County and its sod houses are in the Nebraska Historical Society, familiar to everyone with an interest in the American West.

Butcher shot several photos of Sylvester's daughter Leila & her husband Frank Thomas. This negative is damaged but a detail reveals her plants outside the door, their dog with perhaps their son and his Uncle.

Second shot on the same day.

This shot is later, more children. Better roof.

And still later

"Frank Thomas's New House"

The family did prosper.

Merna, Nebraska

While many quilts were made for and in memory of William

McKinley, I could find no record of Sylvester Read's.

See more of Butcher's Nebraska photos here:
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/1875-1899/solomon-butcher-sod-photos/

21st Century Slips

Center of a quilt attributed to Mary Miller Taylor, dated 1832

MESDA Collection

https://mesda.org/item/collections/quilt/1533/

A flash of light appeared over my head last week in looking at this quilt and several others from the early 19th century. What if those birds were available as pre-cuts?

Broderie Perse or cut-out chintz quilt from Julie Silber's inventory

Chintz images snipped from yardage, sold to needleworkers who stitched them to a background? I'll never look at a chintz quilt in the same way again. Were these images purchased as slips (an old term for embroidered vignettes to be attached to another textile)?

James Collection, International Quilt Museum 

https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/19970070306

Then another light bulb went off. What if you could buy slips ready to applique today? 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Build a Nest by Bonnie Franklin, precut shapes in a kit

Lots of suppliers sell applique slips. Today they're called "laser cut silhouettes" or "pre-cut fused applique shapes."

I knew Edyta Sitar sold these precut, pre-fused applique shapes

for her blocks of the month and other quilts.

It's brilliant!

And I had noticed Kay & Lori Lee Triplett's fusible pre-cuts for their 1856 Huguenot Friendship Quilt. Each block is available ready to applique for $10 each.

Patsy Thompson designs

But until I did a websearch for words like fusible applique pre-cuts, I had no idea what was available.

Quilting Creations

Now I tell you this, reproduction quilt fans, because there's a lot of potential out there for some interesting applique. It's a relatively expensive way to buy fabric ---but then, like the much-missed salad bar, it's so convenient.

Raw edge applique with edges covered with embroidery stitch,

detail of a quilt from about 1830.

And I am in the fabric business and know well that the most profitable way to sell fabric is in kits---a marketing concept that might have been well-known to dry goods retailers in 1825. 

Arborescent furnishing-weight chintz repro from Scalamandre

I haven't seen any fusible pre-cut chintz images for sale today, but that may be because quilt-weight repro chintzes are hard to find and decorating-weight chintz is so expensive by the yard. The chintz above is from ebay---25 inches wide, a yard and a half for about $76 with shipping. The chintz would have to be inexpensive and abundant to make cutting slips profitable.

See a post on Mary Taylor's 1832 quilt here: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/05/mary-miller-taylor-quilt-4-1832.html