Dixie Rose

Block from a North Carolina quilt

The North Carolina Quilt Project discovered several unusual patterns, including this applique design, which local tradition called the Dixie Rose.

Quilt by an unknown maker, mid 19th-century.

Quilt date-inscribed 1855

made for Laura Brown McCallum, Robeson County, North Carolina

The only two versions of the design discovered so far are in these two North Carolina quilts, one

a sampler signature quilt, one a repeat block and both look to be sashed with cording.

A 1910 novel name "A Dixie Rose"

We don't know what Laura McCallum and her friends called the design. The term Dixie Rose is quite a Southern tradition, but seems to be found more towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th as a given name for Southern babies, etc.

Grave of a woman born in 1924

When Terry Thompson and I started making Civil War commemorative quilts twenty years ago we were quite taken with the pattern and featured a couple of reproductions in our books.

Judy Davis made this one from a pattern I drew,

echoing the use of  fussy-cut paisley cones for the leaves and border

in the quilt at the top of this page.

A simpler version by Ilyse Moore

from another of my patterns.

Terry did a block for her Southern Memorial Quilt.

And designed a variation for her

book Four Block Quilts

Most of these patterns are out of print and hard to find but the pictures may provide inspiration.

Print this out at 200% for a rough 16" pattern.

Here are links to the files at the North Carolina project on the Quilt Index.

Laura McCallum's Sampler:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-D02

The repeat block version was once attributed to Sarah Williams but in the book North Carolina Quilts the caption says unknown maker. (See the quilts in book plates 3-14, 5-1, 5-2.)

A post I did several years ago.
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/08/northern-lilysouthern-rose-block-6.html

Yankee Diary 5: A Union Basket

Block 5 Union Basket

by Barbara Brackman

11" finished basket in a 15" finished block

My top is at the quilter's.

Lori Kukuk should be done soon.

In spring, 1861, Carrie's town was in a patriotic fervor as railroad cars stopped in Canandaigua carrying the first volunteers off to the war.

From Carrie's diary, May 1, 1861.

" A lot of us girls went down to the train and took flowers to the soldiers as they were passing through and they cut buttons from their coats and gave to us as souvenirs.

Dozens of designs for patriotic envelopes were printed.

"We have flags on our paper and envelopes, and have all our stationery bordered with red, white and blue. We wear little flag pins for badges and tie our hair with red, white and blue ribbon and have pins and earrings made of the buttons the soldiers gave us.

"The Star Spangled Banner" 

"We are going to sew for them in our society and get the garments all cut from the older ladies society. They work every day in one of the rooms of the court house and cut out garments and make them and scrape lint and roll up bandages. They say they will provide us with all the garments we will make. We are going to write notes and enclose them in the garments to cheer up the soldier boys. It does not seem now as though I could give up any one who belonged to me.

Abbie Clark Williams's quilt. 

Collection of the Ontario County Historical Society

"The girls in our society say that if any of the members do send a soldier to the war they shall have a flag bed quilt, made by the society, and have the girls' names on the stars."

Canandaigua's Young Ladies' sewing society was good as their word. When Abbie Clark married Captain George Norton Williams after the war they presented her with a flag quilt. The stars are inked with the names of her friends including Carrie Richards.

Abbie Clark.
She looks just like the woman in the 
Star Spangled Banner illustration.

Abigail Stanley Clark Williams (1843-1902) was the youngest of four daughters of Myron Holley Clark and Zilpha Watkins Clark. Her father was Governor of New York from 1855 to 1857, a member of the Whig party and an advocate of temperance and antislavery.

 Sisters Mary and Zilpha were also Carrie's friends.

The stitchers squeezed 36 stars into the blue field on Abbie's quilt, the number of stars on the flag from 1865 to 1867.

Becky Brown's Basket.

She added a few leaves.

Union Basket 

See last Saturday's post for more information about the inspiration for this basket block.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/05/union-baskets.html

Union Basket by Denniele Bohannon.

Her background is navy blue.

Denniele's embroidered her words.

This is the last of the words---

except for your signature and date of course.

This month's block celebrates the Union, capturing the spirit of Canandaigua in the first few months of the war. The inspiration is a basket block found in two antique quilts. 

The block finishes to 15", but the pieced basket is

actually an 11" finished block, pieced into a larger square.

Cutting the Basket

A - Cut a square 9-5/8". Cut in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 1 triangle.
B - Cut 2 rectangles 2-3/4 x 7-1/8".
C - Cut a square 5-1/4". Cut in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 1 triangle.
D - Cut at least 9 squares 3". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 18 triangles of various shades.
E - For the handle cut a strip of bias 19" long x 1" and turn under to finish 1/2" wide. I used an old 45 record as a template for the curve.

The basket fits on point into a 15" finished block. For the edge triangles cut 2 squares 11-1/2". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4 triangles.

Letters

The word UNION should print out 1-1/2" inches tall and 5-2/4" long.

Add seams for traditional applique.

To Print:

• Create a word file or a new empty JPG file. 
• Click on the image above. 
• Right click on it and save it to your file. 
• Print that file. Check to be sure the word is 5-3/4" long. 

Using the templates cut the letters UNION. (Add seams.) Glue or baste the edges under. Or embroider---or print, paint, etc.

Flag

Use a backwards flag from Block 2 (you made 4). Glue or baste the edges under.

For the flag pole cut a strip 1" x 2". Glue or baste the edges under.

Sewing

Applique the handle & letters first to triangle A. 

Leave the top of the O letter unstitched so you can insert the flagpole later.

Piecing the basket

Piece the basket into the edge triangles to make a 15-1/2 " square to finish as 15".

Applique the flag and flagpole over the basket handle. Close the top of the O as you add the flagpole.

A sewing society, detail of  a drawing by Winslow Homer.

Harper's Weekly

From the Ontario Repository:

Canandaigua, April, 1861.
"The Ladies are all for the Union.
We observed a beautiful flag, with the Stars and Stripes floating from the Observatory of the Ontario Female Seminary. We learn that it was made by the young ladies themselves....

In spite of the latest Parisian fashions, the tri-colored tints that are borne on our national standard is preferred by the ladies in making up some of the essential articles of their wardrobes....A meeting of ladies was held at the town house....suitable material for a large number of bed ticks was distributed among those present to be immediately made up."

Becky's block Photoshopped without leaves.

Look at those letters!

Union Baskets

Basket with a Union Flag

This extraordinary block is from a quilt in the

collection of the Indiana State Museum

by Martha McFeely Fry

According to family records when the quilt was donated, Martha McFeely lived in Greencastle, Indiana. Sweetheart Benjamin Fry from Fountain County, Indiana, enlisted  in the 2nd New York Regiment, the Harris Light Cavalry.

Library of Congress

Martha and Benjamin's letters and diaries from the Civil War years are also in the collection of the Indiana Historical Society.

New York Historical Society

https://www.indianamuseum.org/

Martha's is Quilt A.

Union by: Kay Ross, 34” x 44”, 2014

Kay Ross's interpretation of that quilt made for the 2014 American Quilt Study Group exhibit.

Read more about her process here:

 https://www.facebook.com/baldwinreynolds/posts/10153991350597024:0

Julie Silber has shown an antique quilt with a similar flag in a basket. The flag is repeated in the border. The piece is said to have been slave made (Quilt B)

The two quilts (Martha Fry's on the right) have a lot in common: Same basket pattern although
the appliqued handles differ a bit. 

Different basket, similar idea.

This marvelous sampler is in the collection of

the Iowa State Historical Society.

This sampler was donated by a woman named

Eleanor Orth

And on the topic of baskets with words:

Block in a Masonic album sampler from Cumberland County, Maine

in the Museum of our National Heritage,

the Scottish Rite Museum.

http://mdsmobius.supremecouncil.org/detail.php?term=quilt&module=objects&type=keyword&x=0&y=0&kv=545&record=22&module=objects

Wish you had a pattern for a basket quilt with a flag? Wait till Wednesday.

Free Labor Fabrics & A Few Quaker Quilts

Detail of a silk patchwork quilt by 

Quaker Rachel Goodwin Woodnut,

Salem, New Jersey, 1827-1828

Collection of the Winterthur Museum.

In 1832 poet Elizabeth Margaret Chandler wrote about a quilting party in Tecumseh,  Michigan.

"I was at a quilting last week. There were about twenty girls besides myself and in the evening about the same number of men."

Elizabeth Chandler  1807-1834

Elizabeth, a Philadelphia Quaker, took antislavery sentiments with her to the Michigan frontier. These included a boycott of slave-grown cotton. She had promised a gift to her Aunt Jane Howell, but in 1833 apologized:

"I should like to have sent you thy patchwork by this opportunity, but have not yet got it finished, as sewing cotton run[s] low with us, and I felt unwilling unless compelled by actual necessity to purchase any of the slave manufacture.....I shall not be able to make it the full size as I shall not have pieces enough. It will I expect require a border, perhaps the width or a breadth of furniture calico."

C was for cotton-field in the 1846 Anti-Slavery Alphabet book

Free produce cotton, as it was called, was in short supply in the Michigan Territory, She was looking for chintz (furniture calico) and sewing thread not produced in the Americas where slaves suffered to supply the western world with the newly popular fabric.

Another early silk quilt from the Winterthur's Collection,

(#1962.0072)

The maker of this strip quilt is unknown but she was likely a Quaker

who dressed in silks and wools rather than slave-grown cotton.

Elizabeth might have made her aunt a silk quilt instead, using the European fabrics that many antislavery Quakers preferred for clothing and patchwork. It was difficult to find free-labor cotton in Michigan or for that matter in Philadelphia, the nation's third largest city.

Free Labor Store in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. 

Quakers maintained a store here

at 3 different locations from 1848 to 1857.

Antislavery shoppers could find free-labor sugar, rice, fabrics and other goods at Free Labor Stores. Benjamin Lundy's newspaper the Genius of Universal Emancipation discussed free labor stores in 1832. 

Above a list of fabric for sale at Lydia White's Dry Goods Store, 42 N 4th  Street in Philadelphia. She "has caused to be manufactured a number of bales of cotton ---the production of free labor---from North Carolina." Lundy also mentioned Jane Webb's Free Grocery Store in Wilmington, Delaware.

 Free Labor Store supposed to be Benjamin Lundy's in

Baltimore, often said to be the "first", although claims of "firsts" are always dubious.

I've never seen a cotton quilt with the story that it was made of free-labor cottons, but many silk Quaker quilts survive.

Center of a wholecloth silk quilt made by Philadelphia Quakers

Hannah Callender, Sarah Smith and Catherine Smith,

Dated 1761

Collection of Independence Hall

The Smith/Callender quilt is one of the earliest reliably dated American quilts.

Silk medallion quilt, collection: Smithsonian Institution, mid-19th century

A note with this quilt indicated it had been pieced of 

“Wedding and ‘Second Day’ dresses" from the wardrobe of 

Clarissa or Clara Tarleton Penn , St. Mary’s County, 

Maryland, who married March 7, 1809.

Read more about Elizabeth Chandler and Free Labor Stores here at Quaker Quilt History:

http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/04/elizabeth-margaret-chandler-and-free.html

James & Lucretia Mott also managed a Free Labor Store
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/09/lucretia-coffin-motts-quilt.html

Read more about the Smith/Callender quilt:
http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2012/02/18th-century-quaker-marriage.html

Marsha J. Heringa Mason. Remember the Distance that Divides Us, The Family Letters of Philadelphia Quaker Abolitionist and Michigan Pioneer Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, 1830-1842. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004.