2025's Applique Block of the Month Starts in March

 

Our 2025 Applique Block of the Month series begins here on the last Wednesday of March. Models are made----well, some models are started; some tops are DONE. Many years I base the series on a woman's dairy from the Civil War era such as Mary Chesnut's, Caroline Cowles Richards's or Sarah Fowler Morgan's.

Sara Tappan Doolittle Lawrence Robinson

 (1827-1911) when she was thirty

This year's journal is by Sara T.D. Robinson (as she called herself), written in her first year in Kansas where she and her husband came from Massachusetts to fight slavery. Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life. A Full View of Its Settlement, Political History, Social Life, Climate, Soil, Productions, Scenery, Etc. was published in 1856.

My copy of Sara's diary had a leaf pressed inside.

Who owned it before me?

Sara T.D. Robinson lived on the crest of a rocky ridge overlooking the Kansas plains, the same geological formation that I live on. One hundred and seventy years and a few miles separate our houses on Mount Oread (once called Hog Back Ridge.)

Sara lived on the crest of the ridge overlooking the town.

We’ll spend March to December, 2025 observing how Sara saw the natural world around her as she braved Bushwhackers and primitive living conditions while enjoying the flora and fauna, particularly the native birds. 

Inspiration

Our blocks will be inspired by traditional applique and Sara's descriptions.

Here's a set for nine blocks on the square.

Nine blocks finishing to 15" = 45" sides.

Add 6" finished strip border with 4x9=36 birds finishing

to 5" (Add seams to the bird templates.)

Or place the blocks on point, add triangles...

And a 10" finished border as Becky Collis did:

With cardinals in the corners:

How much fabric?

If you are planning on one background fabric & 15" finished blocks:

Straight set & border- 2-1/2 yards

Diagonal set & border- 7 yards.

Nine appliqued blocks: birds, trees & flowers in color:

You might like to have 8 different half-yard pieces

or scraps from your bottomless stash.

Elsie Ridgley's fabrics

Denniele Bohannon's

Becky Collis's

Barbara Brackman's---pieced background

The pattern fits into a 14" square but you might want to give the birds more space & make 17" blocks.

Starts here at CivilWarQuilts on March 25th.

Here's our Facebook Group for posting your birds:

LibertysBirdsQuilt

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1716334192277047

And you can buy the pattern in my Etsy shop for $12.

Click here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1851873148/libertys-birds-appliqued-block-of-the?

Rebecca Stoner Rosen's Civil War

Flying Geese Quilt attributed to Rebecca Jane Stoner Rosen (1838-1921)

79" x 94"

Quilts of Virginia

When the Civil War began 23-year-old Rebecca Rosen had been married to David Harrison Rosen for about 6 years and had two young sons, James and David L, born the month the war commenced. (Some accounts tell us there were three boys.) David I was a carpenter, contracting to build houses and barns in their neighborhood in northern Rockbridge County, Virginia.

The 1860 census shows David & Rebecca with 4-year-old James

living among her Stoner relatives.

In July, 1861 the husband she married at 17 was "fearfully wounded," in the first battle of Bull Run according to his 1929 obituary. Wounds must have healed as he re-enlisted the following year in the Fourth Virginia Infantry Regiment of the Confederate Army: Stonewall Brigade of the Liberty Hall Volunteers where he remained until the Confederate surrender.

 

Tombstones in the graveyard of the "Old  Providence A.R.P. Church" they attended tell us a little of her Civil War experiences.

When a diphtheria epidemic raged through the area sons James and David L. died within three weeks of each other.

FindaGrave

James's tombstone is hard to read. The death date 

is 1864 not 1861, when he was 8.

David died at the end of November at age 3 years, 7 months and 14 days; James on December 11th at 8 years, 8 months and 6 days as their markers lovingly count. Baby Cornelia born in 1864 survived. After the war Rebecca gave birth to three long-lived daughters, Cora (born 1869), Flora (1872) and Lola (1876.) 

.

The census also tells us that David was farming with land worth about $3,000. Three older females lived in the house. Elizabeth Stoner (1883-1886) at 66 was Rebecca's mother.

Eighty-one year-old Margaret Minnick McClelland (1788-1875), a fellow church member, is not easily identified as a relative so she may have been a boarder. And 13-year-old Sarah E Stoner---one of Rebecca's nieces?

Rebecca Stoner Rosen (1838-1912), probably early 20th century.

Rebecca lived to be 74.

Their farm Maple Grove was in a community named Raphine, Virginia in Rockbridge County near the Augusta County line. The unusual name had been given to his family home by neighbor James E. A. Gibbs (1829-1902), famous as co-inventor of the Willcox Gibbs machine, a rotary hook chain-stitch sewing machine. Raphine Hall was derived from the Greek ραφις  rhaphis, (also raphis and rhapis) which means needle.

Rhapis excelsa a palm with needle-like leaves

The Rosen family at Maple Grove from Virginia Quilts

The caption tells us this paper photo dates to 1850 but clothing and photographic format indicates it's much later in the 19th century if not early 20th. Rebecca may be the woman on the left. The women wearing hats are visitors, perhaps daughters.

Granddaughter Margaret Rosen Fulwider Mynes (1920-2012) showed her family quilts

to the Virginia project team. She and the documenters thought the first two might

be from 1870; the one on the right from 1880. Margaret was the daughter of Grace Lola Rosen Fulwider, Rebecca's youngest.

The triple sash and cornerstone set is typical of Southern quilts made

after 1880, which is likely to be the date of all three. As Rebecca lived until

1912 these 1880-1900 quilts could all have been her work as Margaret thought.

The 1900 census captured them living with daughter Grace Lola who was 24

and a boarder. The numbers to the left of the word Virginia on Rebecca's line indicate they'd been married 44 years; she'd given birth to 7 children and 4 were still living.

Dorothea Lange photo, 1936

Library of Congress

Art Student Mary Hallock Foote's Civil War

 

Sampler quilt inscribed

 "School of Design 

Engraving Class 

Cooper Union"

I loaned this quilt made at the Cooper Union school in New York, probably during the last year or two of the Civil War, to the DAR Museum where it was exhibited in Sewn in America last year.

I fortunately know a bit about it and have guessed a lot.

The quilt is 54" by 88" wide. Sanitary Commission guidelines asked for long, narrow quilts to fit hospital beds.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/06/cooper-union-sanitary-commission-quilt.html

Gulielma Field (1814-1875) who taught wood engraving also knew how to quilt. Alice Donlevy, one of her students, recalled:

"Under her guidance many patchwork quilts were made during the Civil War, in an upper room in the Cooper Institute, where the students of the Art School came to quilt for any half hour they could spare after lesson times....Every student that I remember had to learn to quilt."

I recently came upon a biography of one of the engraving students at the school. Mary Hallock spent the last year of the Civil War learning wood engraving at the Cooper, as she called it. Mary, a Quaker from Milton, New York moved to the city, boarding with relatives, making life-long friends at school and learning wood engraving techniques, a new periodical illustration technique thought to be an appropriate occupation for females. (Some accounts tell us she was there after the war but most say 1864-1865.)

"The Female School of Art was a school for the instruction of respect­able females in the arts of design, and, in the discretion of the Board of Trustees, to afford to respectable females instruction in such other art or trade as will tend to furnish them suitable employment." 

Mary A. Hallock Foote (1847-1938) in the 1870s 

about the time of her marriage to Arthur DeWint Foote

"Afternoon at a Ranch"

Mary's 1889 wood engraving for Century Magazine

Mary became a skillful, well-known illustrator and her time at the Cooper Union is often mentioned. In his 1882 History of Wood-Engraving in America: "Mrs. Foote (then Miss Hallock), the best of our designers on the wood began her art studies [at the Cooper-Union.] Credit for her skills are assigned to male teachers rather than Gulielma Field or the other women. 

The wood engraving classes were small. In 1864 Robert O'Brien was listed as teacher and 11 students were noted. (Cannot find the 1865 report.)

"1864 Drawing and Engraving on Wood. ROBERT O’BRIEN
Miss Bianca Bondi, Laura E. Brower, Frederica Barnes, Abbie Crane, Miss Sarah B. Denroche, Alice Donlevy, Sophia A. Grant, Emelie Hueter, Miss Frances Ketcham, Amelia Van Horn, Rhoda A. Wells. —11." ,  In the same school Miss Curtis, Miss Gibbons, and Miss Ledyard had their first lessons." William J. Linton

I list these women because I like to think a few of them might have made the unsigned blocks in my quilt.

Illustration by Mary Hallock Foote

See more about Gulielma Field and the Civil War quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/12/stitching-soldiers-quilts-at-cooper.html

Petticoat Press #1: Olivia's Chronicle for Emily Edson Briggs

 

Petticoat Press: Block # 1 Olivia's Chronicle by Jeanne Arnieri

Our 2025 pieced Block of the Month is Petticoat Press. This celebration

of women journalists reporting on the Civil War will include a

free pattern posted on the second Wednesday of each month in 2025.

Emily Pomona Edson Briggs (1830-1908) "Olivia"

1906

The first block Olivia's Chronicle recalls Emily Edson Briggs who wrote for the newspapers during the Civil War under the pen name Olivia. Her specialty was Washington society and fashion but she also expressed opinions on politics---the ever-fascinating subject to Washingtonians.

Harper's Weekly

A White House levee (reception) early in the war

Olivia's Chronicle by Becky Brown

"What's Black & White & Red All Over" seems to be our favorite joke.

Emily arrived in the capital when the war began as so many new government employees did. Ohio-born, she was married to John R. Briggs who had a history of work in midwestern newspapers. He'd obtained a job as clerk for the House of Representatives. The Briggses had one young son John.

Washington changed as young men went to war. The Treasury Department replaced them with female clerks, horrifying conservatives who believed it was the edge of the slippery slope to equality (It was.) Emily was outraged to hear their opinions that women were too inept to do the work and wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Chronicle expressing her contrary ideas in eloquent fashion. Editor James Forney was impressed and hired her to write for his Chronicle and Philadelphia Press.

James Forney

The President's enemies called him "Lincoln's Dog."

Olivia's Chronicle by Elsie Ridgley

Elsie is using my Moda William Morris reproductions.

Our Ebony Suite collection from last year is perfect for the

color theme of "Black & White & Red All Over."

Olivia wrote on a variety of topics; she visited the White House often and became friends with the Lincolns.

Olivia's piece on "Assassination Night" was collected in a post-war compilation of news clips.

 Olivia's Chronicle by Denniele Bohannon

During the last year of the war Emily was pregnant with her second son but Arthur L. Briggs died soon after birth.

Library of Congress HABS

The Maples or Maple Square, an 18th-century house where Emily lived after the war. 

Her husband died here soon after they bought the house, which is still standing.

Emily had a long and distinguished career in journalism.

Becky Collis's block in William Morris Ebony Suite and

a period madder red.

The Block

Blues from my Morris Manor collection for Moda

BlockBase # 2302.5 is unnamed in BlockBase.

Most of the blocks using this 4X seam structure do not seem to have published names, so we'll enjoy naming them for our Press Women. This one pieced of a single triangle is in BlockBase but with no published source. We'll call it Olivia's Chronicle.

Here's our Facebook group. Post your pictures on PetticoatpressQuilt

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570543959924 

Further Reading: A collection of Emily Edson's Brigg's columns was published in 1906 as The Olivia Letters

https://books.google.com/books?id=WlKtbzjZ1c0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=female+treasury+clerk+civil+war+emily+briggs&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsu8Wyut6HAxXukIkEHTzXGL4Q6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false

You can buy a PDF of all 12 patterns at my Etsy shop for $12.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1836924572