I’ve read that the French have no good expression to say “I’m excited about….” A direct translation “Je suis excitée” would more often be understood as talking about physical arousal—not appropriate. This vocabulary gap is most unfortunate because they would have no way to tell you about how happy I am that there will be an in-person Celebration this year. There’s a link below for an interesting article exploring the different cultural outlooks behind this linguistic issue, but don’t go there yet; we’ve got quilt-related things to talk about.

Celebration is going to be pared down—no meal events, social distancing arrangements, etc.—but it’s happening. Yippee! You may remember that I wrote about taking part in the nomination process for our 2021 Heritage Honoree, Mary Gasperik; I’m super excited now to see her inducted. I have seen some of her quilts in person, and I’m looking forward to seeing more. She made one masterpiece that was on display in the Smithsonian for a year, and I hope that one comes to visit at the Hall of Fame. You can get a preview of her work on the Quilt Index; but it would be better if you can come to Marion and see the real things. (Link below.)

We’ll also be inducting Marti Michell whose acrylic templates have made it possible for me to attempt a Seven Sisters quilt (no photo; I said “possible”, not “done”), and recognizing the Lutheran World Relief for their charitable work. No live auctions, but there will be small lectures. As excited as I am about the inductions, it’s a toss-up whether I’m more excited about seeing quilting friends. This will be the first non-Zoom, live get-together I’ve had in almost a year and a half, and I know most of you are in the same position. Come if you can and we’ll have a great time. Stay tuned for more details on the website.

We’re having some pretty nice weather here in the Chicago suburbs, and I’ve been out in the gardens. Maybe I can post some photos when things start blooming. In the meantime, how about looking at some flowering quilts? We can tiptoe through the many variations of tulips and then see what else I can find.

First, let’s see some real tulips.  These photos are taken from the backyard of the Quilters Hall of Fame Museum which operates at what once was the home of Honoree Marie Webster.  According to her granddaughter Rosalind Perry, Marie loved gardens and many of the quilt patterns she sold were floral designs.

Marie Webster had more than one tulip design for patterns or kits which she sold by mail order from her upstairs bedroom, placed in department stores like Marshall Field in Chicago, or distributed through the shop of another Honoree, Mary McElwain. 

Here’s one of Marie’s trade publication showing a graceful arrangement called “Windblown Tulips”, along with an actual quilt in that pattern from our collection.

The design looks different in the next quilt—there’s sashing, corner-stone borders, and a variation of the tulips in the borders—but you still get the sense of flowers bending in an early Spring breeze.

The breezy look disappears in Webster’s “May Tulips”. It’s pure Art Deco, and would have been so “on trend” when it first came out.

In the 1930s-50s, Honoree Mary McElwain operated a quilt shop in Walworth, Wisconsin (in what was then a high-society resort area) and another in swanky St. Petersburg, Florida. Here are two pillow kits from the Wisconsin shop that I just recently cataloged (they’ll be searchable as soon as I can do the data entry). “Dutch Tulip” has the blue border and “Tulip Plant” is in peach.

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Dutch Tulip could be repeated to make a bed-sized quilt like this one shown in a trade “card” from another distributor, BOAG Company of Chicago.

The final McElwain tulip offering we’ll look at borrows an element of movement from Webster although Marie was not the designer; it’s called “Tulip Swirl”. This version really makes a statement, and I think it should have an award for “Best Use of Rick Rack Trim”.

Here are three blocks made by Honoree Mary Schafer. I’m puzzled by the fat stems in the first one (although they make a great secondary daisy), and I wonder about the green petals in the second, but these are all readily identifiable as tulips. 

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That isn’t always the case. Look at these blocks from the collection of Honoree Cuesta Benberry, who may have acquired them in a round robin exchange. That first one has more of a poppy leaf and I just don’t understand the layers of petals (maybe it’s a parrot tulip). The second makes me think of angel wings and halos. But these are both cataloged as tulip blocks.  The last in the group clearly qualifies as a tulip; it’s from Cuesta’s “Always There” quilt.

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Honoree Ruby Short McKim did some tulip designs too. The first photo shows the one in her “Flower Garden” quilt, and the second is from her “Flower Baskets”.

Tulips weren’t just popular as quilt motifs in the 1930s. Here’s one from fifty years before that which was collected by Honoree Mary Barton.

And they continue to be popular as seen in this panel of blocks made from a 2003 pattern in the magazine of Honorees Marianne Fons and Liz Porter. (Okay, the center block has daisies, but I didn’t want to crop.)

That’s a pretty good romp through the tulips of our Honorees. But wait; there’s more. I’ve put more than one tulip on a quilt myself. These are somewhat stylized—they must be hybrids.

The Quilt Index claims 834 entries under the tulip motif. (Some look more like lilies or roses, but who am I to question?)  Lots of those are straight set like Webster’s  “Windblown Tulips” and the red McElwain “Tulip Swirl”, but many are grouped in fours. This first one has no leaves and makes your eye jump from the “x” of the actual block to a secondary pattern with a quatrefoil center.

Here’s another layout that fools the eye; the stems of the satellite buds make a hashtag/pound sign design. (Why are those buds round? Unopened tulips are ovoid.)

This one has lost its stems and gained a four-lobed center, but it still has that diagonal symmetry that is so pleasing.

But I’m also pleased with this quilt where symmetry has been ignored. (Dare I say “tossed out”? It does have a nice, tossed appearance.)

And there’s always someone who is totally unconventional. This quilt has an appealing vining border design and blocks where the stems form a circle instead of a cross.

Most of the tulip quilts on the Quilt Index are constructed as blocks, but here’s an unusual medallion setting. The layout is similar to what you see in Webster’s “Poppies” and “Sunflower” (that’s for another day), and the stems have taken on an interesting Art Nouveau curve.

Here are two more curvaceous ones.

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And finally, an overall layout from the 1970s. This “first quilt” was made from a quilt kit purchased from Lee Ward’s Craft Company in Illinois.

And with that we’ve come full circle from Marie Webster’s kits, so it’s a good place to stop.  We never got past the tulips, so before I go, I want to show you Marti Michell’s “Wild Rose”.

You can consider it a floral teaser for either Celebration or another blog, or maybe for both.

Your quilting friend,

Anna

French language. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181104-why-the-french-dont-show-excitement

Quilt Index Gasperik quilts. https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=artists&kid=18-47-2

I hope the Michigan tourism office doesn’t mind my referencing their slogan as I write about an Honoree from their State.  Maybe after reading this, you’ll want to visit some of Mary Schafer’s quilts in East Lansing, so I think it’s a legitimate use.  But before we “travel” to the Great Lakes/ Wolverine/ Mitten state, there’s some unfinished business from my earlier blog about Carrie Hall.

You may remember that I told you about the magazine article I purchased on eBay. Well, it arrived, and I can share it with you. First off, it cleared up a misconception I had: Hall actually had two, not one, periods of doll dressing.  I wrote about her latter-day making of historical dolls, but she had an earlier period of making fashion clothes for 27-inch mannequins.  I’m not sure whether/ how she used these dolls to promote her couture business, but they coincide with her dress-making career.

The magazine article is written by a doll collector who won several of Madam Hall’s creation at an auction. Before the auction, the author read up on Carrie Hall; he learned all the facts I told you plus he found a weak clue that Hall had designed clothes for Susan B. Anthony.  At the auction, he chose to bid on dolls that he thought were most representative of the fashion trends that Hall had written about in her book “From Hoopskirts to Nudity”.  Here’s what he came away with (remember, these are 27 inches):

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Some week, I want to take a side trip into the connection between fashion and quilting, but right now it’s time to move on to Mary Schafer.  You can read her bio at the link below. You can also learn more from someone who knew and worked with Mary through these books, available on Amazon and many other sites.

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Although Mary was trained in needle arts as a child, she didn’t take up quilting until her forties.  She bought a quilt kit (design unknown), but was daunted and returned it to the store. A few years later, she decided to try again, and made a Rhodendron quilt similar to this top (which I would have found daunting as well, but she persevered):

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But Mary’s real journey into the world of quilting and quilt history for which she is famous, came from restoring and then replicating an old quilt that her son had used at a beach party. That set her on the path of researching old quilt patterns and making copies of them. For example, Mary discovered a picture of this quilt in Florence Peto’s “Historic Quilts” and she made a copy as a tribute to her. Peto wrote back (they were regular correspondents, and Mary also exchanged letters with Hall of Fame Honorees Joyce Gross and Lenice Bacon)  saying, “Do you know I have never seen another ‘Lobster’ quilt since the one pictured in “Historic Quilts”; I am happy to know you are keeping the design alive.” I, too, have never seen another “Lobster”, so I question whether the design is still alive.  Does anyone out there want to revive it?

I usually include more photos from the Quilt Index when I write, but there are too many to choose from, so I’ll suggest that you browse on the link below.  Some of the quilts are made by Mary, some are ones she finished, largely with blocks and tops made by her pen pal, Betty Harriman, and some that Mary collected herself. Here’s a photo from the Alliance for American Quilts showing Mary working on some of the odds and ends she preserved.

Michigan State University Museum acquired part of her collection–developed over a period of 40 years–of more than 200 quilts plus quilt tops, fabrics, and quilt blocks representative of most quilt styles and periods in American history. They have a traveling exhibit available for a fee if your guild is interested.  The exhibit was shown at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA a few years back, and it was visited by several bloggers (not me, sadly); check out their sites—links below–  for some good views of Mary’s work.

The Quilters Hall of Fame has over a dozen blocks that are the result of Mary’s very active round robin participation, two quilts finished by Schafer and an unfinished partial quilt top.  You can see these at the link below, but I also want to show you this quilt that Mary called “Single Chain and Knot.

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Our Collections description says of the knot: “This design resembles a Pennsylvania Dutch fylfot.”  It could also be called a lauburu or Basque cross, a traditional celtic hooked cross with four comma- -shaped heads. Today, Lauburu is a symbol of the Basque region; it is also associated with Celtic peoples, most notably Galicians and Asturians. 

If there’s one thing that got Mary Schafer into the Hall of Fame, I think it must have been her message of quilting as being worthy of respect. She started making, collecting, studying and talking about quilts in that doldrums period after World War II and the Whitney Museum exhibit. She quietly (but publicly) went about the business of telling us that we should honor our work.  She lived by the words of Marie Webster in “Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them” : “To raise in popular esteem the most worthy products of home industry, to add to the appreciation of their history and traditions, to give added interest to the hours of labor which their construction involves….” I don’t know about you, but sometimes that message gets lost for me—like when I’m bored from making 96 half square triangles—so it’s good to have Mary Schafer to remind me that I’m engaged in a meritorious pursuit.  Others will talk about the beauty of quilts (and Mary did as well) or the creativity involved, but sometimes it’s enough to think about diligence and competence in the process.  Yes! Thanks for that, Mary Schafer.

Your quilting friend,

Anna

Bio https://quiltershalloffame.net/mary-schafer/

Mercer Museum exhibit photos on Dawn’s blog http://collectorwithaneedle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mary-schafer-collection.html

Mercer exhibit on Triplett’s blog https://www.quiltandtextilecollections.com/blog/the-mary-schafer-collection-a-legacy-of-quilt-history

More Mercer photos http://www.quiltyhabit.com/2017/07/visit-to-mercer-museum-mary-schafer.html

Quilt Index, Mary Schafer Collection https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=specialcolls&kid=12-91-471

Hall of Fame Schafer Collection https://quiltershalloffame.pastperfectonline.com/webobject?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_criteria=%22Mary+Schafer%22&searchButton=Search