Yankee Notions #11: Modern Broken Dish

Yankee Notions #11, Modern Broken Dish by Becky Brown

The block can contrast nostalgia and modernism as North and South

remained distinct cultures after the Civil War.

The classic story of Southern nostalgia is about an end-of-the-century visitor from out of town on  Charleston's battery admiring the moon over the harbor. "Ah," sighs the native, "You should have seen it before the War."

The tale has been attributed to wits Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and many others. There was New England nostalgia aplenty (see last's month's post on thrifty quilting) but the South had the reputation for living in the past.

Historian James E. Davis summarized postwar differences:

“In significant ways Southerners were romantics, Yankees more pragmatic and formalistic. Southerners leaned toward idealized medieval visions offered by Sir Walter Scott, but Yankees plunged ahead with increasingly rampant capitalism.“ 

The educated woman was a threat

Attitudes towards industry delineated differences as did the role of women. Post-War New England was full of New Women.

Ridiculed and reduced to an emasculating stock character.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. used the cliche to describe his mother-in-law Cornelia James Cannon, novelist and women's rights essayist: She was a "bustling woman...brusquely disdainful of frocks and frills....her hair and dress in shapeless, no-nonsense Boston bluestocking style."

Modern Broken Dish by Dorry Emmer

The Modern Woman

The Perpetual Southern Belle

Virginia Clay Clopton (1825 - 1915)

Frocks & Frills all her life

Virginia in her seventies

Collection of the American Civil War Museum

The Block

Modern Broken Dish by Denniele Bohannon

BlockBase #2415 was given the name Modern Broken Dish

by the Kansas City Star in 1937

Cutting a 12-Inch Block

A - Cut 2 squares 5-3/8. Cut in each in half diagonally. You need 4 triangles

B - Cut 4 strips 1-1/2" wide by about 14". You'll trim these when the block is finished.

C - Cut 9 squares 3-3/8".

Cutting an 18-Inch Block

A - Cut 2 squares 7-5/8. Cut in each in half diagonally. You need 4 triangles

B - Cut 4 strips 2-1/8" wide by about 20". You'll trim these when the block is finished.

C - Cut 9 squares 4-3/4".

Modern Broken Dish by Denniele Bohannon

This Month's Tangible Yankee Notion:

Decorative Sewing Tape Measures

Modern Broken Dish by Dorry Emmer

The perfect fabrics!

Decorative tape measure

One must have a tape to fit clothing. This tailor may be working

on attaching some soutache to the customer's pants or measuring the seam.

A better, modern tape measure would be retractable.

Modern in 1858

And even better if it were pretty.

Footstool?

I have a small collection of these advertising and celluloid plastic tapes.

One more block next month.

Yankee Notions by Becky Brown,

11/12 Blocks