53 Union Shield

Union Shield

by Becky Brown

Becky used striped fabric.

Because there are 53 Saturdays in 2011 we have 53 blocks. You might want to repeat this one for the corners. It's an original design I drew because I noticed how popular appliqued shields were during the 1860s and '70s, but found no pieced versions.

Shield from a sampler than looks to be

from the late in the 19th century

See a blog post about appliqued shields here on my main blog:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/03/northern-lily-southern-rose-block-1.html

Union Shield

By Rosemary Youngs

Rosemary made her own stripes.

Union canteen

The image was popular during the War to represent the Union. 

I think these were called earbobs at the time.

Parcheesi board about 1880

Shields remain popular as a symbol of the country.

Cutting an 8'' Finished Block

Here's a link to a PDF with the templates:
https://acrobat.com/app.html#d=jYEHIcLvbLo1HIF2UrXcXw

A  Cut a background square 2 7/8'' x 2 7/8'' . Cut  in half diagonally, creating 2 triangles.

B  Cut a starry blue rectangle 8 1/2'' x 3 1/4''. Trim using template B.

C  Cut a background rectangle 4 3/4'' x 6 1/4''. Cut into two triangles from corner to corner with one cut. This is also on the template page.

D  Cut a striped red fabric into a rectangle  9'' x 5 7/8''. The stripes should run parallel to the short sides. Use template D to trim into a rectangle.

Repeated blocks make a patriotic miniquilt.

Alternated with the pieced star in week #41.

The shield goes right to the edge of the block so

sashing provides a little visual space around it.

Here's a mockup without sashing I made from photos of Becky's blocks.

This is the last of the blocks, but not the last of the posts. I'll keep you updated with pictures of finished quilts and news on the book and new Civil War reproduction fabric lines. Subscribe through email (see top left) and you'll get a note when there's a new post.

The shield just seems perfect the way it is but there were other drafts.

Here's an idea that was rejected.

Happy New Year.

46 Apple Tree

Apple Tree by Becky Brown

Apple Tree can remind us of a Union marching song about Jefferson Davis.

One hundred and fifty years ago this week  Jefferson Davis was formally elected President of the Confederate States of America for a six-year term. The candidate ran unopposed. And who could oppose him?  He personified the Confederacy and it's principles, whether one considered him hero or villain.

Union musician from the Liljenquist Family Collection

 of Civil War Portraits

at the Library of Congress.

Union soldiers who'd been marching to the tune John Brown's Body added lyrics to reflect their hatred of Davis with references to the President and a sour apple tree. Sour apples might cause "the diah-ree" (diarrhea), which rhymed nicely with tree. Or the branches could provide a scaffold for an on-the-spot execution if a Union soldier happened across the very recognizable Davis.

We’ll hang Jeff. Davis on a sour apple tree!
We’ll hang Jeff. Davis on a sour apple tree!
We’ll hang Jeff. Davis on a sour apple tree!
As we go marching on!

After the peace at Appomattox, a version of The Sour Apple Tree was published with an illustration of Davis's fictional escape in women's clothing.

Jefferson Davis in retirement in 1885

Jeff Davis was not hanged. After the War he was released from federal prison in 1867 after serving two years.

This week's apple tree block with red squares hanging in the green leaves was inspired by a block that Carrie Hall showed in her 1935 book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America. The complex block is BlockBase #836. Hall called it Tree of Temptation, a version of the Biblical apple tree that tempted Eve.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A Cut squares 2-1/2" You need 2 red, 4 dark green and 6 light. Becky had some apple fabric for her lights.

B  Cut 1 background square 2-7/8". Cut into 2 triangles with one diagonal cut. You need 2 triangles.

C Cut a dark rectangle 3-3/8" x 6-3/4".

Trim the edges of this rectangle at right angles as shown

To read more about Jefferson Davis's wife see the First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War by Joan Cashin. On December 8, 2011 author Joan E. Cashin will discuss Varina Davis's struggle to reconcile her societal duties and expected allegiance to the South with her personal beliefs at the McConnell Center at the University of Lousiville. Information here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=209220675800349

It's a wonderful biography.

37 Confederate Rose

Confederate Rose

By Becky Brown

Nancy Cabot, quilt columnist at the Chicago Tribune in the 1930s, named several of the Civil War commemorative patterns in this series, most of which she designed herself. She gave us the Confederate Rose below, a complicated pieced design, which I have simplified here, giving the pattern for the center square. You may want to make it in shades of white, pink and rose, the colors of the Confederate Rose plant.

The original Cabot block is BlockBase #2651

 if you want to make it just like Nancy's.

The Confederate Rose is a variety of hibiscus, unusual in that it puts out multicolored flowers. At the end of the 19th century people thought it might be a rose which began the morning with white flowers that turned red at night. Horticulturalists discussed it in their journals after a news story was published in 1884.

"The  'Confederate rose' is the name of a new flower which is white in the morning and red at night. Four of them have been planted around  the grave of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnson in the State cemetery at Austin."

Confederate General

 Albert Sidney Johnson was killed at Shiloh in 1862.

A skeptical editor at the Gardeners' Monthly and Horticulturist wrote:

"We do not know of any rose under this name. There are flowers which open white, and become pinkish when they fade, but we do not know of any rose which does this. It is barely possible that this is an exaggeration of some such fact, though still more possible that it is one of those silly paragraphs of a 'smart' reporter, which do no credit to the newspaper press."

Ten years later a botanist identified it in Garden & Forest

"Hibiscus mutabilis, Cotton Rose, or Confederate Rose, is a small tree of rather open habit. I first noticed it in the gardens of New Orleans, and later at Mobile, Pensacola and Jacksonville. It is a fine plant when in bloom, bearing at the same time white and red flowers, and thus presenting a very striking appearance. The showy double flowers are white in the morning, changing to pink at noon, and to deep red at night. As the flowers last almost to the middle of the next day, the contrast of the white and red blossoms is very impressive. This plant is also known as the Mexican Rose; it is, however, a native of China and India, and thrives well on high Pine-land, but grows to perfection in rich hummock soil."

General Johnson's grave is a Victorian showpiece at the Texas State Cemetery.

He was originally buried in New Orleans; reburied in Austin in 1867.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

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

B - Cut 4 light strips 6-7/8" x 1-7/8". Trim the corners at 45 degree angles or use the templates in the PDF file.

C- See the templates in the PDF file to cut 4 medium.
Click here: https://acrobat.com/app.html#d=ctFEwQNkH7bAhwqzvfhtKg

D- Cut 1 dark square 3-1/2"

Read more about the Confederate Rose, a once-popular hibiscus at this site:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/southerngarden/hibiscus.html

UPDATE MONDAY 9-12-11 for those having trouble printing the templates:

WARNING: Reading below this line may cause eyes to glaze over.
Here is a JPG with the template. Click on it. Print it so it comes out 8-1/2 x 11. We'll see if this works

Later--I tried it and it did not print out the right size. Piece B should have printed out so the top dark line measured 2-7/8" (to match the long side of triangle A) but it printed out 2-1/8".

I need to enlarge it as it prints. By how much?

 Well I have a tool, a proportion wheel, that I used to use in the old days of cut and paste layout. It  tells me that if I have a line that is 2-1/8" and I want it to be 2-7/8" I have to enlarge my print by 135%.

There has to be a digital proportion wheel. So I did a websearch for those words and found one

http://www.knightprinting.com/help/tools.php 

I typed in the numbers-

first the current number 2.125.

Below that what I want it to be 2.875.

And then had it calculate. It says 133%. Close enough.

I then printed the JPG above by going to PRINT PREVIEW. At the top it says SHRINK TO FIT. I pulled down the menu to CUSTOM and typed in 133%. I see I cropped out some pattern pieces so I messed around on the sheet by going to full page view and adjusting the margins (little arrows) till I got it right in the frame. And I printed it. It's close.

It's probably easier to photocopy it at 133%

In any case, you might want to cut these shapes a little larger. Work out from the center and trim, is all I can say.

And I wonder why I never get any sewing done anymore. Computers are now my hobby. To put a happy face on it we can say we are learning math skills and printing skills. I'm bookmarking that digital proportion tool. It could be useful.

35 Star of the West

Star of the West

By Becky Brown

Star of the West can symbolize the Frémonts. Jessie and John C. Frémont were a mid-19th century power couple.

Jessie Benton Frémont

Their marriage was a political partnership, an idea ahead of its time. Jessie's father was an important Senator, so she had many influential friends and relatives. John was known for his western explorations, for his Presidential run as the first Republican candidate in 1856 and for his arrogance in the face of authority.

Frémont was a western explorer and

 a founder of the state of California

During the summer of 1861 General Frémont  became commander of the Union Army in Missouri, a difficult job in a state torn by conflicting loyalties. On August 30th he declared martial law, describing Missouri as disorganized and infested by murderers and marauders under a helpless civil authority,  He stated that armed rebels would be court-martialed, shot and their property confiscated. Furthermore, their slaves "are hereby declared freemen."

Most Missouri slaves like Winnie, whose portrait was recorded

 during the WPA projects, remained in slavery throughout the war.

Frémont 's Missouri emancipation proclamation displeased President Lincoln. The Commander-in-Chief sent a letter by special messenger on September 2nd, warning Frémont that "liberating slaves of traitorous owners will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us." The idea of confiscated slaves as "contraband" was one thing, confiscated slaves as free men another.

Frémont  publicly refused to rescind his order. Jessie went to Washington to argue their case for emancipation with Lincoln. She later wrote of their encounter, recounting her argument that Frémont's move would win the Union international friends.

 "The President said 'You are quite a female politician.' I felt the sneering tone and saw there was a foregone decision against all listening. Then the President spoke more rapidly and unrestrainedly: 'The General ought not to have done it... the General should never have dragged the negro into the war. It is a war for a great national object and the negro has nothing to do with it.' "

Lincoln recalled the testy meeting for his secretary.

“She sought an audience with me at midnight and taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarreling with her."

Jessie was remarkably out of place, a wife deputized to discuss policy with the President. The meeting went badly and so did Frémont's subsequent career. Lincoln removed him from the Missouri command in November. The War remained an official fight for the Union, not a fight against slavery....for the time being.

In this cartoon a pouting John C. Frémont holding an African-American doll sports a head wound inscribed "Lincoln."  The Doctor tells a worried Mrs. Columbia that it's only "a case of Sore Head."

Star of the West (#1128 in BlockBase) is an old block with many other names, among them Clay's Choice and Harry's Star. Both names, according to Ruth Finley in her 1929 book, were tributes to Henry Clay, an earlier politician who also ran unsuccessfully for President.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A Cut 8 background squares 2-1/2".

B Cut 4 medium, 2 dark and 2  background squares 2-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally
.

You need 8 medium, 4 dark and 4 background triangles.

 

The Frémonts returned to California where

Jessie was photographed on her porch

at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Read more about the Frémonts and events of the summer and fall of 1861 at this blog post:
http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=714&subjectID=2   

Read Jessie's letters:

The Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont, Pamela Herr & Mary Lee Spence (editors), University of Illinois Press, 1993.

31 Empty Spools

Empty Spools

By Becky Brown

Empty Spools can remind us of the early months of the war when women set aside their sewing to cut up textiles for lint and bandages. After reports of the first bloody battle at Manassas/Bull Run, women North and South had a heartfelt need to contribute.

Sallie Brock Putnam, thirty years old, was living at her parents' home in Richmond. With two brothers who were doctors in the Confederate Army advising her, she organized friends to provide medical supplies for the Confederacy. Supplies included bandages, clothing, bedding and lint.

"Our women for a time suspended the busy operations of the needle, and set aside the more expeditious and labor-saving sewing machine, to apply themselves more industriously to the preparation of lint, the rolling of bandages, and the many other nameless necessaries which the signs of the times made apparent would soon be in requisition of the unfortunates which the chances of battle would send among us mutilated and helpless. No longer the sempstress, every woman of Richmond began to prepare herself for the more difficult and responsible duties of the nurse."

A hospital near Manassus, Virginia in 1862

Library of Congress

In 1861 Peterson's Magazine advised women to deconstruct linen textiles to make lint.

"Lint should be made of unraveled linen, new or old (the latter preferred), by cutting it in pieces of four or five inches square, which would be highly acceptable, while lint made from canton [cotton] flannel is irritating to the wound.”

Women on both sides abandoned their sewing baskets to participate in a "lint and bandage" mania, as Northerner Mary Livermore described it after the War.

"For a time it was the all-absorbing topic... 'What is the best material for lint?' 'How is it best scraped and prepared?' ... Every household gave its leisure time to scraping lint and rolling bandages, till the mighty accumulations compelled the ordering of a halt."

Doctors believed packing a wound with lint scraped (actually more raveled than scraped) from cotton or linen was an effective treatment method, although our contemporary ideas about infection consider the idea of packing thread into a wound unwise.

The pattern is BlockBase #2350, a variation of a block called Spools by the Ladies Art Company about 1900. Today people tend to call this design Empty Spools, an appropriate pattern to recall the ladies of Richmond who turned from their needles to nursing.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A - Cut 1 dark square 9-1/4" for the spool. Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 2 dark triangles.

B -Cut 2 light strips 9-1/4" x 2-1/2". Cut 45 degree angles off the edges as shown or use the template in the PDF. Click here:
http://www.barbarabrackman.com/31EmptySpools.pdf
NEW LINK (as of 9/1/2011)
https://acrobat.com/#d=kGTumHNuNPkQSPlKFeBrQA 

C- Cut 1 dark square 5-1/4" for the spool. Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 2 dark triangles.

Becky, the pattern tester writes:

"I sewed C to B, and THEN cut the 45 degree angles off B.  (C must be centered on B.)"

Here's how I'd have done it.

Read more about scraping lint during the war by Virginia Mescher in this PDF file Lint & Charpie: It's Not Your Dryer Lint.

http://www.raggedsoldier.com/lint.pdf

And read more about Sallie Brock here:

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brock_Sarah_Ann_1831-1911 

  

Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Observation by Sallie Brock Putnam, Virginia Scharff, editor. (Reprinted in 1996 by the University of Nebraska Press). The book was first published in 1867 so you can read it at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=S3wVAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR5&dq=richmond+during+the+war&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

Winslow Homer

Harper's Weekly

June, 1861

After the lint craze subsided, women went back to sewing clothing and bedding. Note the cockade on the woman in the left forefront who is making a jacket and wearing a hat.