Baltimore Album Quilts originated in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1840s. They have become one of the most popular styles of quilts and are still made today. These quilts are made up of a number of squares called blocks. Each block has been appliquéd with a different design. The designs are often floral, but many other motifs are also used, such as eagles and landmarks. They have a background of white and incorporate many primary colors such as reds, greens and blues.
In the beginning, these quilts of appliquéd blocks were often designed by the maker. In time, patterns by accomplished designers were used.
Baltimore Album Quilts reflected the prosperous community of Baltimore, the second largest city in the United States until the civil war, as most were made not with scraps, but with new fabric. Improvements in fabric manufacture and dying provided new colors that were incorporated into the album designs. As the popularity of this quilt style grew, women far beyond Baltimore began making these album quilts.
Most Baltimore Album quilts were signed. The discovery of an indelible ink made it possible to ink flowery poetry and sayings along with a signature on each block. It appears making these quilts were especially popular with young women. Many included blocks each made by a different person. The complexity of the designs of the blocks demonstrated the skill and taste of the maker. Many hours were devoted to the creation of each of these quilts, and many were carefully preserved as family heirlooms.
Judi Shapiro talks about Baltimore Album Quilts History
Bright colored butterflies bring a feeling of joy and sunshine to one's work, and these dainty little creatures are charming in flower pieces or as separate motifs on table mats, curtains, dressing-table runners, and other household articles.
Butterflies are so easy to work that no one need fear to attempt them, especially with the help afforded by the varied selection on the color samples shown below, and the chart, herewith, giving the direction for the stitches. These butterflies, also the dragonfly and bees, are originally from Weldon's Transfers (1900), you may reproduced tracings from the photo below in order to stitch butterflies similar to those embroidered at the turn of the last century.
The wings are all worked on the same principle; the markings first in long and short stitch (or for the more definite spots and bands, in satin-stitch), and stem-stitch for veinings. All stitches should be directed towards the body. Between the markings the wings must be filled in with long and short stitch directed from their edge towards the body.
For the body, long and short stitch can be worked lengthways, or rows of satin-stitch fitted one into the other, as shown on several of the specimens. The long and short stitch can be continued on the head, or this can be worked in satin-stitch. One or two little stitches of red or yellow, or some fairly bright color, are all that are required for the eyes.
Stem-stitch or split-stitch gives a fine line for the antennae, which are tipped with one or two satin-stitches in the same direction as the stem or split-stitches.
Color enhance reproduction of sample silk butterflies, bees and dragonfly by Weldon's Transfers, 1900. This embroidery is done with fine silk threads.
Watch Malina embroider a silk butterfly using a satin stitch.
Redwork is a form of American embroidery, also called art needlework, that developed in the 19th century and was particularly popular between 1855 and 1925. It traditionally uses red thread, chosen because red dyes were the first commercially available colorfast dyes, in the form of Turkey red embroidery floss. Redwork designs are composed of simple stitches and were mainly used to decorate household objects in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially quilts. Patterns for individual quilt blocks were sold for a penny in the United States, making them popular and affordable. In the 21st century, redwork has seen a resurgence among crafters.The main stitch used in redwork is backstitch or outline stitching, formerly known as Kensington stitch. Redwork was a common introductory form of embroidery taught to children in the 19th and 20th century. Children would make quilts decorated with redwork motifs, with motifs of various sizes prior to approximately 1910 and uniform sizes after that year. It was also a way for women with skills in pattern stamping or embroidery to generate their own source of income from the home. The motifs used in redwork were specific to the item embroidered: water motifs would be used on backsplash cloths, the words "good night" and "good morning" used on quilts, and chairs on upholstered items. The most popular designs found in early redwork (prior to 1900) include Japanese inspired imagery, children, toys, animals and insects, and elaborately-coiffed women, some of which were adapted from designs made for crazy quilts. After the turn of the 20th century, Beatrix Potter characters and animals were the most popular. In the 1910s, tea-towel motifs were adapted into redwork designs, including calendrical themes and kitchenware. The following decade saw the predominance of state birds and state flowers.
Red and white quilts were frequently sewn by groups of ladies who then sold them at auction in order to raise funds for their local, rural school or sometimes a country church. I've included a history of the one-room school houses that so many of our grandparents were once taught in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Many of these school houses were indeed painted red or built from red brick in the Midwest where I grew up as was the public school my grandmother attended during most of her childhood.
One-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most rural (country) and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room. There, a single teacher taught academic basics to several grade levels of elementary-age boys and girls. While in many areas one-room schools are no longer used, it is not uncommon for them to remain in developing nations and rural areas, such as much of the Falklands and Shetland.
The quality of facilities at one-room schools varied with local economic conditions, but generally, the number of children at each grade level would vary with local populations. Most buildings were of simple frame construction, some with the school bell on a cupola. In the Midwest, sod construction was also used, as well as stone in areas such as portions of the southwest where trees were scarce. In some locations, the schoolhouse was painted red, but most seem to have been white.
One-room school building in Jefferson, Colorado
Mission Ridge School was one of the early schools in Mason County, West Virginia. It has been moved to the West Virginia State Farm Museum complex near Point Pleasant. Examination of the materials in this building indicates that boards and timbers were hand-sawed and also hand-planed. Square nails were used throughout the building. Except for the roof and a few boards in the floor, all of the material in this building is original. The blackboard really is a black board, made of wide boards painted black. It was not until much later that slate was used for chalkboards, although students often had individual slates for writing practice.
Teachers in one-room schools were often former students themselves. Their role is well-described by a student from Kentucky in the 1940s: "The teachers that taught in the one room, rural schools were very special people. During the winter months they would get to the school early to get a fire started in the potbelly stove, so the building would be warm for the students. On many occasions they would prepare a hot, noon meal on top of the stove, usually consisting of soup or stew of some kind. They took care of their students like a new mother hen would care for her newly hatched chicks; always looking out for their health and welfare."
A typical school day was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with morning and afternoon recesses of 15 minutes each and an hour period for lunch. "The older students were given the responsibility of bringing in water, carrying in coal or wood for the stove. The younger students would be given responsibilities according to their size and gender such as cleaning the black board (chalkboard), taking the erasers outside for dusting plus other duties that they were capable of doing."
Transportation for children who lived too far to walk was often provided by horse-drawn kid hack or sulky, which could only travel a limited distance in a reasonable amount of time each morning and evening, or students might ride a horse, these being put out to pasture in an adjoining paddock during the day. In more recent times, students rode bicycles.
The school house was the center and focus for thousands of rural communities, hamlets and small towns. Often, town meetings and picnics were also held there.
The vast majority of one-room schools in the United States are no longer used as schools and have either been torn down or converted for other purposes. However, in some rural communities, including among the Amish, one-room or two-room schools are still used, primarily for elementary education, with students graduating to local or regional middle and high schools.
The final operating one-room school in the United States was located in Wainscott, New York. The Wainscott School was located in various one-room buildings until an annex was built in 2008.
Shadow embroidery is made on sheer fabric, the handkerchief linen being the best for the purpose. Study the simple arrangement of forming the cat-stitch shown in the diagram. The miniature stitches taken in forming the latticework effect at the back appear in an outline of tiny stitches on the right side, making a beading which must be evenly placed to outline the leaves on the right side, making the long and short stitch around the leaves. This is very pretty with shadow embroidery and most frequently used. However one does not use leaf green, but most always the same color of the flower.
The plan for the apron herein shown is a development of rose pink on white. If you make the leaves in shadow effect, use the same identical pink that is used on your flower petals or use white floss and outline on the right side, but avoid the obvious choice of green. Finish the rose petals at the center with pink French knots. Do not attempt a color scheme to give the real rose coloring. It would appear cheap and tawdry. The tea apron should be as delicate and floral in effect as the stately pink or white cosmos. Sincerely yours, Winifred Worth.
Click directly on the image to download the largest possible size. Design by Winifred Worth.
Home=Made Quilts Of U.S. Represent $675,000,000 Labor
Girls of Today Eschew "Quilting Bee" Old Fashioned Patterns Are Still in Vogue.
John D. Rockefeller's wealth couldn't buy all the home-made quilts of the United States. Statistical Sam, having craved the indulgence of the kitchen cabinet, continued:
There are at least two home-made quilts to each of the 15,000,000 families of this country; one that 'her mother's made, and one that 'his mother' made.
Home-made quilts are made in spare time. Quilt-making women have little spare time; for, they are able to sit down to piece and patch and sew at those rare intervals when all the rest of the household duties have been attended to.
It takes a year's spare time to make a home-made quilt. Leaving out Sundays and holidays, three-hundred is the number of possible quilting days. Allowing one half hour each day for quilt-making, one hundred and fifty hours are devoted to the completion of one quilt.
The average price of female labor in the Orient is 10 cents a day. The Mexican woman of the peon class receives 20 cents. A capable hired girl in the United States get 50 cents a day; while a qualified seamstress demands and receives pay at the rate of $1.00 a day. Then, why shouldn't the domestic American mother's spare time spent in quilt-making be worth a little more? It is! for the reason that spare time is precious time-- overtime! And the same should be rated as time-and-a-half, according to the pay of the seamstress.
One of the most popular of grandmother's patterns
for her home-made quilt was, and is still, known as
the 'big star.'
Say, then, she spends one-half-hour a day sewing home-made quilts, and that it takes one year to make one quilt-the problem becomes interesting.
The 30,000,000 home-made quilts that 'his mother' and 'her mother' made, according to my figures, represent $675,000,000 worth of overtime.
It is a generally conceded fact, that a rich man's fortune dwindles one-third under the hammer. Subjected to a compulsory turning into cash, John D. Rockefeller's billion dollars would assume the proportions of $666,666,666.66 2-8, which wouldn't be sufficient to pay for the labor expended on the home-made quilts of the United States, even at a rummage sale. Because, every man-jack of a true American would be there with the individual over-bidding, redeeming price to save his home-made quilt.
One of the most popular of grandmother's patterns for her home-made quilt was, and is still, known as the 'big star.' Another old-time favorite which has stood the test of time is the 'box' quilt, so designed that any way you look at it you see cubes. Four hundred and eighty-six diamond shaped pieces are required to make the regulation star for the 'big star' quilt. The 'box' quilt, also fashioned of diamonds, may contain as many pieces as suits the fancy of its maker. The 'crazy' quilt has no definite pattern. It is a better mess sort of an effort; though, withal, it is often as highly prized as its high-toned cousin, 'log cabin.'
More love, life and labor is wrapped up in the home-made quilt then may at first be imagined. Years of saving neckties, hat crowns, ribbons and bits of silk are required to provide the bare material for its pattern. And the mother, or wife, who makes it can in nine cases out of ten call each particular piece and tell you what it used to be and whence it came.
The girls of today are not so greatly given to quilting as were our mothers and their mothers. The demands of present day society and the allurements of contingent amusement forbid. When we were children, however, the 'quilting-bee' was one of the chiefest mild amusements to which the women folk flocked.
The intrinsic value of the homemade quilt may not be fully set down in dollars and cents. There is sentiment connected with it that money couldn't buy. Here's to the homemade quilt! Pensacola Journal, 1907
Especially popular during the 1880s were the designs of Kate Greenaway (Catherine Greenaway -17 March 1846 – 6 November 1901). Women often incorporated needlepoint and painted stencils from Greenaways illustrated books into their crazy quilts.
Greenaway's paintings were reproduced by chromoxylography, by which the colors were printed from hand-engraved wood blocks by the firm of Edmund Evans. Through the 1880s and 1890s, her only rivals in popularity in children's book illustration were Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott.
"Kate Greenaway" children, all of them little girls and boys too young to be put in trousers, according to the conventions of the time, were dressed in her own versions of late eighteenth century and Regency fashions: smock-frocks and skeleton suits for boys, high-waisted pinafores and dresses with mobcaps and straw bonnets for girls. The influence of children's clothes in portraits by British painter John Hoppner (1758–1810) may have provided her some inspiration. Liberty of London adapted Kate Greenaway's drawings as designs for actual children's clothes. A full generation of mothers in the liberal-minded "artistic" British circles who called themselves "The Souls" and embraced the Arts and Crafts movement dressed their daughters in Kate Greenaway pantaloons and bonnets in the 1880s and 1890s.
These lovely floral letters were originally designed for cross stitch I believe. They are from the 1800s and are French in origin. Wouldn't these look nice on a set of linens for a new bride? Click directly on the image to download the largest pattern available.
Description of Needlepoint Pattern: patterns from 1880, bonnets, pets, toys, girls and boys, needlepoint of children, Victorians, for crazy quilts
Have a question about the illustration? Just type it in the comment box and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I only publish content that is closely related to the subject folks.
This pincushion (above) cover done in punch or pierced work is charming when finished. The flowers and circle are worked solid with the scrolls in the outline stitch and the large dots as eyelets. The punch work in the center is done with a very large needle and preferably in fine cotton. The needle is pushed up through through the one dot and down through the opposite one twice, drawing the stitches quite tight, then the needle is brought up through the next dot in a slanting direction and the same thing is repeated in all the dots, running both ways, so that little squares are formed with large holes at each corner. Use mercerized cotton for the embroidery.
Victorian motif for a sachet.
Another charming little motif to be used on sachets, pin cushions, or fancy articles. The flowers, buds and leaves are embroidered solid, and the stems are worked in the outline stitch. The dots in the centers of the flowers are done in French knots. More Related Content:
No. 718 is a design for embroidering baskets of flowers in cross stitch style. The large basket is five and one-quarter inches in height by five and three-quarters in width; the smaller baskets are four and one-half inches in height by four and one-quarter in width. Transfers for one large and two small baskets are given here.
In the pattern, all the stitches are crosses but, in the above illustration, some are made single and some fancy as a suggestion for color. The single stitches in the smaller design represent the baskets, the crossed stitches leaves and the fancy stitches flowers, with a few single stitches at the center for darker coloring. In the larger design, the single stitches represent the basket, the crossed stitches the leaves and bow knots and the fancy stitches flowers. As the flowers are conventionalized, any preferred colors can be used.
The window pane method is perhaps the simplest and is particularly successful when the material is thin such as batiste, lawn, or handkerchief linen, the best plan is to pin the sheet of paper and the material together an hold them up against the window pane and with a sharp pencil trace the design on the fabric, or else lay the material on the pattern on top of a table or other hard surface, and carefully trace the design with a well pointed pencil. The design may also be transferred to heavy material by using a piece of transfer or carbon paper, to be placed between the pattern and cloth, using a sharp pointed pencil to secure a clean line. More Related Content:
The scalloped edge is to be padded and button-holed. The leaves, flowers and dots can be worked solidly or as eyelets. The stems are to be outlined. To pad the scallops work chain stitch between the lines, heaver at the centers, lighter at the points of the scallops, or apply one or more threads between the lines, tacking here and there in couching style and drawing closely together at the points. Button-hole over the foundation.
In the design given for the infant shoes, the scalloped edges are designed to be buttonholed, the flowers and leaves are to be worked in solid embroidery with the stems outlined and the dots either solid or as eyelets, or the flowers, leaves and dots may all be don in eyelet work.
The window pane method is perhaps the simplest and is particularly successful when the material is thin such as batiste, lawn, or handkerchief linen, the best plan is to pin the sheet of paper and the material together an hold them up against the window pane and with a sharp pencil trace the design on the fabric, or else lay the material on the pattern on top of a table or other hard surface, and carefully trace the design with a well pointed pencil. The design may also be transferred to heavy material by using a piece of transfer or carbon paper, to be placed between the pattern and cloth, using a sharp pointed pencil to secure a clean line.
