quiltersmuse.com Blog

Imagine yourself as a girl in the early 1800s. You would have household chores to do, and you might also work for the lady down the road, helping with the children, doing laundry or other household chores. Occupations for women were much more limited than today. In certain months of the year, you would be allowed to teach. Educational opportunities for women were very limited.

Then along comes the chance to travel to another state or country to earn your own money and have enough left over to send home to help your brother get an education, or to help your aging parents on the farm in Quebec who are struggling to make ends meet.

Once you’ve gathered your clothes, whatever will fit into a bandbox and into the stagecoach, you’re on your way to Lowell or Manchester where you begin work in the mills, a dangerous place to be. In places like the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the mill’s windows are sealed to keep humidity high so the threads being spun won’t break. As a result, workers, including children, come down with pulmonary diseases like chronic bronchitis, tuberculosis and cancer.

The working conditions are abusive including long hours, short breaks, and food as doled out by the mistress of the house in which you find lodging.

Later on, when the flying shuttle was created, it prevented the need to pass the weft threads back and forth, by hand. However, the mechanized shuttle could get going at such an unregulated speed, it could break loose, flying into someone’s head or eye. Fingers and hands often got caught in machinery. Children were used to re-tie broken threads because they could run quickly to the thread, do the work, and retreat quickly to get out of the way. Long hair of girls and women, if not tied back, also caused accidents, some of them fatal.

As is often the case, throughout history, the rich get rich by exploiting the poor and needy. It was not until the mill workers began speaking out for themselves that situations began to change. At the same time, new regulations like shorter work days and more pay cut into profits; and union activities such as picketing and strikes, in the long run, seem to have helped to shut down many of the mills that were prosperous in the 19th century.

Change is afoot, even today, regarding mills and the preservation of them and their history. The American Textile History Museum has sold mill equipment, formerly used in New England, pieces of New England history, to a repository in the South.

The Cranston Printworks, a long term producer of print textiles, in Webster, Massachusetts is now having their printed cottons produced overseas, joining a number of other companies who have done the same. This is one of the reasons that consumers must buy desired fabric, when it is first seen in a shop or online. Overall “runs” of any given printed cloth is very limited.

People in the quilt industry, from designers to editors, to quilt shop owners who prepare kits, as mentioned in publications, must wait months and months for some of these new overseas shipments of fabrics.

I totally agree with Sandra LeBeau, the speaker whom I mentioned in my last blog. She divides Mill time into three sections: pre-Industrial, Industrial, and post-Industrial. Considering all the outsourcing of manufactured goods, the United States fits best into the last category.

Cotton has been a mainstay of textile making for centuries. I am reading a book titled, Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map. Please see the link below. I have been intrigued in reading about the theft of inventions and patented items related to textile equipment.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

The question – “Can you tell me where to buy turkey red embroidery thread?”

At first, I was floored by this question because I wondered where the reader found the term and why she was asking me. Mystified, and short on time, when I read the one-line message, I wrote back, “Why do you want to know?”

The subsequent reply was that she had seen a (19th century) pillow, worked in turkey red thread, in an article I wrote for the current issue of The Quilter magazine.

If someone were to go into a general store that carries hobby supplies, like JoAnn Fabrics or Michael’s, and were to ask for “turkey red” thread, the look on the face of the customer service representative would be priceless. Most likely, the person would not have a clue as to what the customer meant.

“Turkey Red” is a process, not a specific color, that was effected by the use of root madder dye and many processing steps, in other centuries. Today, companies such as DMC and Anchor make red embroidery thread, some colors of which can sometimes approximate the color of 19th century dyes.

The main quality that accounted for the popularity of so-called “Turkey Red” thread, in the 19th century, is that it is colorfast and lightfast. Yet, not all thread that was used for embroidery, at that time, had those endearing properties.

“Turkey Red,” madder-based fabrics were printed, as well. To see and/or purchase simulated fabrics of that kind, visit Margo Kramer’s Reproduction Fabrics website.

As far as thread goes, none of it is now commercially called “Turkey Red,” a relatively archaic term. At least, not at this writing. I may give someone an idea. However, embroidery threads are sold by number, not color name.

In the recent past (early 1990s), some thread manufacturers had “issues” due to changes in environmental laws. Some reds were unstable. However, the problem seems to be resolved.

My best advice for choosing threads for outline stitch embroidery (Redwork, Bluework, etc.) is to choose a cotton embroidery floss that you like, in whatever color you choose, even perhaps a variegated color for a more avant garde look. For more information, you may want to consider purchasing my CD e-book: Redwork Renaissance Revisited that does provide more specific information. It is listed on my Products Available Page on our website.

Best wishes,

Patricia Cummings

President Obama and his sister, Maya, have inherited their mother’s collection of Batik fabrics that she bought while living in Indonesia. Ann Dunham was an anthropologist. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995, at the age of 52.

Meanwhile, clothes were made for her using the beautiful Batik fabrics she collected. She had lived in Indonesia, marrying there in 1967. A current news story broke last week and has been featured in an audio version on National Public Radio, as well:

NPR Story

An exhibit of her Batik textiles and dresses can be seen until August 23, 2009 at the Textile Museum at 2320 S. St., NW, Washington, D.C., (202) 667-0441

You can enjoy seeing a collection of 35 antique Indonesian batik swatches, in my collection, in a permanent file on my website.

Batik fabrics are made via a wax resist method of dyeing. The areas that are to remain free of dye have hot wax applied to them. After dyeing the fabric, the wax is melted by application of heat. Even a hand-held, hair dryer could work! Here are a couple of African batiks from my own collection, as well as a small quilt in which I used a modern batik fabric as one of the borders.

Miniature quilt designed by Patricia Cummings

I hope that you enjoy these additional examples, and if you are in the Washington, D.C. area, perhaps you’ll have a chance to stop by the Textile Museum, a fun place to visit at any time!

Stay cool!

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications – our main website

For the benefit on non-historians, I thought that I would take a moment to explain some terminology. When I say that my specialty and area of interest is the 19th century, I mean the 1800s. People always think that 19th century means 1900s, but the 1900s are actually the 20th century. Likewise, the 18th century is the 1700s. That is confusing, I know.

In the seventeenth century (1692), they hung “witches” in Salem, Massachusetts, and crushed one man to death, who was presumed to be a witch. All were innocent, but were killed because of little girls who told lies. In the 21st century, the Taliban executed women in Arabic countries. It is a wonderful thing to live in the 21st century in America, where we are supposedly free from oppression. I say “supposedly” with a candid view that oppression does still exist for women in America, and sometimes the oppressors are other women, believe it or not!

Well, on the subject of time frames, let me get back on track here. I was in an antiques shop the other day and spotted a table with items of great interest to me. While I hate the idea of a “cutter” quilt, a dealer had taken apart a 19th century quilt that had a few turn of the century fabrics, (early 20th century fabrics, that is). She stated that the items for sale came from a 1930s quilt. That does not seem likely, unless the quilt had been made in the 1930s from an older scrap bag, and if she had clear provenance (knowledge of the background of an object). A quilt is always dated by the LATEST fabric included in it.

She has made two sided pincushions and was also selling detached squares (Hmmm … “detached squares” could be a good name for some of the people I unfortunately know, but that is another story altogether, ha, ha, ha!).

I couldn’t resist buying some pincushions, large and small, and a package of quilt squares. I had a little time tonight to edit a few of the photos that Jim took for me earlier today. I wanted to show you some fabrics and how distinctive authentic 19th century fabrics are. A trained eye can spot them right away.

In this square, you can see two Black and White prints. One is an all-over, geometric repeat; the other is a striped shirting print. Brown cotton fabrics were popular although many that we see in old quilts have disintegrated due to the iron mordants used in the dyeing process. In this square, we see a color of blue not made until shortly after 1870, called “Cadet Blue.” Stripes and plaid fabrics, and lots of geometric prints were popular in the late nineteenth century. Often floral designs are superimposed over lines and other there are background designs like pindots, etc. There is a “lot going on,” usually.

This half-square triangle unit is comprised of a fabric that features the Crescent Moon, a very popular motif and an ancient one, with specific meanings. The red and white calico is indicative of the red and white craze, seen also in Redwork embroidery within the last quarter of the nineteenth century. “Quarter” means 25 years, so if I say “last quarter, nineteenth century, I mean from 1875-1900. Redwork was most popular from 1890 on, and followed the Crazy Quilt trend of the 1880s.

This particular pincushion features Navy blue, a perennial and ancient color derived originally from dye from the Indigo plant. There is also a very distinctive gray color called “mourning gray.” The mourning and half-mourning fabrics were made so that women could denote their status as widows and the period of grief they were enduring. Victorian women followed the trend of Queen Victorian who mourned her dear Prince Albert forever after. In this pincushion, the pastel pink color stands out as a 20th century print. Pastel colors were not made until after the turn of the century and became most popular in the 1930s.

Now, all this talk about centuries brings to mind a poem by Emily Dickinson that is one of my favorites. I will provide the first and last verse of the poem, and if you are interested, you can hunt down the rest. There are six stanzas in all. The poem is numbered “712.”

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

…

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity -

circa 1863 (”circa” generally means 10 years on either side of a specific date)

Have a great weekend!

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

A recently discovered blog features some of my words from an article I wrote about toile and its origins. Included are some wonderful examples of toile fabric being used in all manner of home decoration in the blogger’s home. Although, at first, this blog ended up in my spam mail box, I am so glad that I retrieved it. Some wonderful pieces of this classic kind of cloth are shown.

http://bargainhuntingwithlaurie.blogspot.com/2008/11/in-love-with-toile.html

To see my website article on the subject, click on:

http://www.quiltersmuse.com/toile.htm

Enjoy!

Patricia Cummings