Yes, Martha Washington was a quilter! Isn’t that exciting! There are just a few quilts and tops that are attributed to Martha and other women in her family. Here are several videos and articles that describe what is known about them. I think the coolest part of this is that a few of the pieces of fabric pieced into these quilts are remnants of fabrics that are also found in existing pieces of clothing from the first First Family!

Article with great photos: A Stitch in Time
by Amanda Isaac, Mount Vernon’s associate curator
https://magazine.mountvernon.org/2020/Spring/stitch-in-time.html

Video about the Penn’s Treaty Quilt
by Susan Schoelwer, executive director of historic preservation and collections at
Mount Vernon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5fPVgNuewE

Videos about the Neoclassical Swag quilt top
Begun by Martha, continued by her granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis Law
part 1: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1032063432449109
part 2: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1867623757360698

Gayle, a newsletter subscriber (and I’m happy to say also an alumna of my big quilt repair workshop), asked some questions about a quilt, and sent along some photos. She wrote:

“This is a quilt a friend gifted me as she cleaned out her mom's (DOB 1934) house last weekend. Her mom grew up in a Quaker community in Maine and lived her adult life in Kalamazoo, MI which is where the quilt has lived in a cedar chest for a long time. She was not a quilter but we're assuming this piece was handed down to her from a relative in Maine. There doesn't appear to have batting between layers. The backing is flannel. Some of the pieced fabrics have a sheen which may be silk? The piecing was all hand sewn but the binding was machine stitched. There are some pieces that appear frayed, but overall, the quilt is in very good condition. I'm trying to get a possible date on it.”

Here is my answer, expanded with some more reading:

The pattern is called Pineapple or Windmill Blades.  It is considered in the Log Cabin ‘family’, and those quite often don’t have batting.

The fabrics look more like lightweight wools, sometimes called challis.  Both the weaves and wear patterns look like wool rather than silk. I have a Log Cabin in the Courthouse Steps variation with challis fabrics that look quite similar.  I’ve read that those fabrics were often used in the Civil War period - two reasons - one, the blockade of trade between North and South meant there was much less cotton fabric production - two, Abolitionists, often including Quakers, boycotted what cotton there was unless it could be documented to have been made with “free-labor”.  This began as early as the 1840s.

One of the fabrics, the paisley by Gayle’s finger in one of the photos, is I think a fabric called faille and can be made from different fibers.  A customer once showed me a silk Pineapple quilt that has that on the back.  Family oral history has it that the quilt was likely made during or just past the Civil War.  Faille is produced and used still today, so the dating would come mostly from colors and prints….

What’s interesting is that this quilt was probably made in a Quaker setting, but not in silk as many Quakers used. I read that, while the Quakers were abolitionists, actually participating in the anti-slavery arena was frowned upon, and created a temporary schism!

You may wonder about seeing such bright colors this early. One reason this can be is that animal fiber fabrics such as wool and silk took in and held color much better than plant fibers like cotton and linen. I have seen several wool quilts dated 1870-1880s with such bright fabrics, again validated by other clues.

I’m wondering if the flannel back is more recent, maybe much more recent.  Doesn’t seem a 19th century thing to me.

Do any of you have ideas/opinions about all this?

First pair: Almost identical fabric in both Gayle’s Pineapple and my Courthouse Steps - the print with multicolored squares on point. Seeing this in both quilts made me super happy.

Second pair: Purples in Gayle’s Pineapple and my Courthouse Steps that both look like the mauveine dye that was developed c. 1860 and became quite fashionable. Look for the fabrics we might call magenta today.

Third pair: Fabrics of the same weave and also really similar color and print style on both quilts.

Thanks to Gayle for sending along a lovely quilt to spark some joy and conversation!

…was freshly conserved a few years ago. This article contains two short videos which I found quite interesting and fun, especially learning about how decisions about the process were made. Both videos in the article are good; the second one has more fabric details.
https://news.fitnyc.edu/2020/08/27/this-alum-replaced-the-skirt-on-a-degas-sculpture-at-the-met/

A fuller history of conservation of the sculpture:
https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/conservation-and-scientific-research/conservation-stories/2020/degas-dancer

• Preserving Our Quilt Legacy Virtual Workshop - full description and info

• Something From Nothing - A series of small quilts made from decorator fabric samples

• Create Whimsy - an interview with me

• Sacred Threads exhibit catalog, at Amazon

• Quiltations - monthly fun from my friend and quilt appraiser Charleen Richtsmeier - A potpourri of quilt news and events, recipes, jokes, quilt and fabric history, words to the wise, etc., etc.
Write Charleen to subscribe

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