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