Ladies Aid Sampler #10: Scissors by Denniele Bohannon Willing hearts and hands wielding a pair of scissors recalls Canandaigua, New York and its Civil War sewing societies. In 1863 the ladies of Canandaigua held a Festival and sent the proceeds of $266.43 to the Sanitary Commission's Women's Central office in New York City. Canandaigua in 1860 We know quite a bit about Civil War life in Canandaigua thanks to Carrie Richards who kept a diary during those years. Caroline Cowles Richards Clarke (1842-1913) was 18 when the Civil War began. Carrie and her young friends converted their charitable sewing society into the Young Ladies' Aid Society to support the Sanitary Commission (Their elders had their own society). "We are going to sew for [the soldiers] 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." Canandaigua is in Ontario County in the Fingerlakes Region. Scissors by Becky Brown "In one year's time we made in our society 133 pairs of drawers, 101 shirts, 4 pairs socks for soldiers, and 54 garments for the families of soldiers." "Most of us wrote notes [to] put inside the garments for the soldiers in the hospitals. Sarah Gibson Howell has had an answer to her letter. His name is Foster — a Major. She expects him to come and see her soon." Carrie's friend Gippie Howell (1842-1897) married Major Benjamin Brown Foster from Maine about a year after she began writing him. Many romances began with a soldier writing a thank you letter for a quilt or hand-knitted socks. "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." Abigail Stanley Clark Williams (1843-1902) Canandaigua's Young Ladies' sewing society was good as their word, presenting Abbie with a flag quilt after the war. The stars are inked with the names of her friends including Carrie Richards. Abbie's quilt is now in the collection of the Ontario County Historical Society. The Block Scissors by Barbara Schaffer Barbara fit 2 hearts into her block. New Yorkers included many tools in their album quilt designs including the seamstress's tool, a pair of scissors. Lydia Wygant's (?) scissors is quite detailed in Mary Zabriskie Vanderbeck's 1865 album in the Winterthur Museum collection Hearts & hands were also a popular image, sometimes pictured with a scissors. Fussy cutting beats reverse applique in my playbook.

Whether you consider yourself a Civil War buff or just love Civil War fabrics and color schemes, The Quilting Company has 5 FREE quilt patterns that are sure to speak to you. Download your copy today and start quilting!

Preparing the Foundation First, to download the foundation, visit this page on my website and open the pdf. When I am making quilts from Miniatures in Minutes, I always use translucent vellum paper (see here). I use it for a number of reasons. One reason is that with this technique, it is very useful to see through the foundation. Another, and this is important, is that because I am placing multiple patches at once, I use little dabs of glue to secure the patches to the paper. After the foundation is sewn and it’s time to remove the paper, I wet the paper in order to release the glue. Vellum takes this quite well. The paper holds its integrity while wet/damp and is easy to tear off. Not so for printer/copier paper. Once you wet it, printer paper will turn into a sodden mess that is a pain to tear off and leaves way too much residue at the stitch lines. There is, however, a problem with vellum as well: you must use a laser printer/copier with it. Ink jet ink will rub off the vellum onto your fabric. With these little X blocks, however, I realized that I could place the glue dots such that I never glued fabric to paper and therefore didn’t need to wet the paper to release glue. While I still think it is preferable to use vellum (so you can more easily see through the paper), you can use printer paper. You will just need to use a light box in order to see through the paper. Whew, that was a lot of explanation (which probably most of you didn’t need – sorry). So, first step: print the foundation onto either vellum (preferred) or printer paper (will work). Cut the blocks into four separate units. Here’s one. Place the foundation on either a white background or a light box (essential if you used printer paper) with the printed side facing down. Now, fold over the foundation so that you are very exactly lining up two adjoining seam lines. Fold and crease the paper sharply. (It is important that you be exact here: this is what allows the perfect alignment that happens like magic when you sew the foundation). Repeat for the other seam adjoining seam. On the non-printed side of the foundation, line up the quarter inch line on your ruler along the far left seam line. Using a red extra fine line permanent marker (I use Sharpies), draw a line alongside the ruler. (Why use red? Because when you flip the foundation over to sew, it would be confusing to have an assortment of black lines to choose from). This line marks the edge of your seam allowance. Draw another seam allowance line after the second seam line. That’s it, your foundation is now ready to sew.

While checking out one of the blogs I follow, Civil War Quilts, I follow this blog so I can draw the blocks in EQ 7. While there I saw a quilt with this wonderful Double Flying Geese border. Scroll to the bottom of that post. The quilter is Lois O and this is her link. Of course this border intrigued me. When I saw her drawing I thought I can draw this in EQ 7. I did but to be honest I had to draw it first on graph paper, and then it was easy! Shape Tool So here is a little tutorial to draw it in EQ 7. I made the block lay out, twice as long as it is wide. There are 6 geese, so I divided the length into 6 even segments. To make drawing easier I made my block 6" x 12". Each line I drew across the block I divided into thirds. To do this you need to use the shape tool, the second tool from the top on left is the tool you use to divide lines in half or thirds. This is on an Easy Draw block. This is a very handy tool for drawing complex blocks. Be sure to click on the little red square to open the menu. Menu and lines divided into thirds These dots for the thirds helped me line up the points for each goose. On the right is the menu for the shape tool, which allows lines to be divided. Here is a close up of the triangles for the geese. There are some extra lines that need to be removed to make the sky larger around the geese. The same area with the extra lines removed. To delete the lines, use the Pick tool, the top left hand side tool, click on the line, it will be bold, and use the delete key on your key board to remove the lines. Here is the completed and colored block, be sure to add your dimensions to the Notecard so you remember the correct size of your block. Remember EQ 7 default size for all blocks is 6'' x 6". You can draw this block in easy round numbers like I did and then change the size to print your paper piecing paper to fit your quilt. And here is the paper piecing pattern. Now wasn't that fun! I think I even know the quilt I might use this one. If it isn't too busy. Happy Stitching and Happy EQing!

Whether you consider yourself a Civil War buff or just love Civil War fabrics and color schemes, The Quilting Company has 5 FREE quilt patterns that are sure to speak to you. Download your copy today and start quilting!

Yankee Diary by Barbara Brackman 42" x 54" Quilted by Lori Kukuk Yankee Diary by Denniele Bohannon Here's how Denniele and I set ours Here are the setting instructions for the Yankee Diary quilt. As we've sewn along you've received setting instructions for the blocks but here's a summary. Do refer back to each block pattern for more information. The basic set is two sections, top and bottom. The top section is made of of 3 strips. Top left Top Center Top Right The bottom section is two rectangles Refer to Block 11 for instructions for placing the flag in the dog's mouth. Bottom left Bottom Right The only extra piece you need for my set is a strip cut 12=1/2" x 3-1/2" that goes below the flag Becky Brown's set is a little bit different using all the parts. She has a checkerboard in the lower left corner which I forgot to put in. Next Wednesday: Borders. Nope. Next Wednesday fabric requirements and setting for next year's Antebellum Album Block of the Month. Borders for this one and the rest of Carrie's story on January 10.

Herringbone baby boy quilt in Paris, displayed in the baby's bedroom.

WAR QUILTS EXHIBITION Curated by Dr Annette Gero Venue details: Manly Art Gallery & Museum, West Esplanade, Manly NSW 2095 Exhibition launch: Friday 3 July 2015, 6 - 8pm Exhibition dates: 3 July - 22 November 2015 Open: 10am - 5pm Tuesday- Sunday Entry: Free This year marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. Gallipoli (2015) is a particularly significant event in the Australian WW1 memory. To mark this event, Manly Art Gallery and Museum has taken the initiative by putting on an exhibition of War Quilts from all wars. Waves of migration have resulted in many people from all over the world bringing their own quilts from their home countries when they have settled in Australia. These visual masterpieces date from 1770 through to the end of World War 2, and include many Crimean War Quilts including one made from 15,000 pieces. The quilts have been made from a variety of textiles, ranging from soldiers uniforms through to “mum’s make do” quilts made here in Australia after the war from blackout fabric. Dr Annette Gero will give a talk about the history and story behind each of the quilts in the exhibition at the Gallery on Sunday 12th July 2015 from 2 to 3pm. The War Quilts Exhibition will also be published as a book, about the same size as “The Fabric of Society” E mail [email protected] to reserve your copy at 30% discount

Block #4, Eight Hands Around by Pat Styring Eight Hands Around is a good block to represent the four Alcott girls with eight hands devoted to both serious causes and entertainments. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) Photo taken during the Civil War before her nursing duty in Washington. Friend Augusta Bowers French remembered: "I can see Miss Alcott now, breezy & snappy & using a lot of slang." During the four years of Civil War Louisa led a busy life. She turned thirty, a significant occasion that permitted her to serve as a nurse. Rules written by Director of Nurses Dorothea Dix demanded one must be over thirty to volunteer. And so Louisa went to Washington in December, 1862 soon after her birthday to do what she could at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown. Eight Hands Around by Becky Brown Fussy cutting a stripe Family and friends lent a hand. Neighbor Sophia Peabody Hawthorne inked Louisa's clothes with laundry marks. She tells us Abba fretted that she'd be helpless without her daughter and Bronson announced he was sending "his only son." Louisa naively packed her games and Dickens novels to entertain the patients. Letter from Sophia Hawthorne to daughter Una. The Union Hotel Hospital was a model of what not to do with injured and ill patients. Eight Hands Around by Dennniele Bohannon (16") Louisa's turn as a nurse lasted only six weeks; the work almost killed her and certainly traumatized her. She caught typhoid fever, the hospital scourge, and her father was called to take her home. Both survived the trip, something the Hawthornes found miraculous. Rosa Hawthorne Lathrop: "Truly, [Bronson] Alcott was completely at the beck of illusion; and he was always safer alone with it than near the hard uses of adverse reality. I well remember my astonishment when I was told that he had set forth to go into the jaws of the Rebellion after Louisa, his daughter, who had succumbed to typhus [typhoid] fever while nursing the soldiers. His object was to bring her home; but it was difficult to believe that he would be successful in entering the field of misery and uproar. I never expected to see him again." Collection of Houghton Library, Harvard Sophia and husband Nathaniel Hawthorne lived next door after buying this house from the Alcotts. You get an idea of the steepness of the hill behind the houses on the Lexington Road. That rescue mission may have been Bronson's shining moment and her hospital service Louisa's. Some accounts tell us that Dorothea Dix helped out by sending two of her nurses to accompany the Alcotts on the railroad back to Concord. Eight Hands Around by Janet Perkins Once home Louisa was bedridden for weeks (delirious for a few) and woke up to find she was bald. The doctors had ordered her head shaved in Washington to apply blistering chemicals to her scalp. (You might have been better off without doctoring at the time.) Blisters were raised on the scalp with a hot wig or a powder of abrasive concoctions. The blisters were lanced and as they drained the hypothesis was that the toxic humors of typhoid drained away. Louisa turned her hair loss into plot in Little Women Eight Hands Around by Addison Louisa told friend Frank Stearns: "The loss of my hair was the worst of it." Louisa survived the typhoid and the blistering. In March she begin writing down her memories of those dark Washington days into four "Hospital Sketches," published in a Boston paper under the pen name Tribulation Periwinkle. Tribulation Periwinkle's coat of arms Hospital Sketches was her first successful book and for the rest of the war her main occupation was writing---writing to keep her family solvent and writing because she loved to do it. Jo in a writing vortex with curl papers in her hair Louisa describes her mania, "writing fits," as one of her alter ego Jo March's obsessions. "When the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit. The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her 'vortex' hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent." Biographer Harriett Reisen, who wrote and produced the PBS documentary on Louisa, looks at these "fits" that alternated with "existential despair." "Was Louisa Alcott, like so many artists, manic depressive? Certainly her creative pattern and mood swings are consistent with the diagnosis, according to the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, an authority on manic-depressive, or bipolar, mental illness." Louisa was quite productive during the Civil War. Her charitable works for freed slaves' and soldiers' relief organizations included producing plays and dramatic events for fairs. She volunteered to dramatize "Six Scenes from Dickens" in conjunction with the Sanitary Fair held in Boston at Music Hall in December, 1863. Music Hall in Boston, 1850s Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society “Things did not go well for want of a good manager and more time," she complained. "Our night was not at all satisfactory to us, owing to the falling through of several scenes for want of actors [but] People liked what there was of it.” And the drama raised $2,500 for the Sanitary Commission's mission. The following year she sent a sketch "A Hospital Lamp" as a donation to the Brooklyn, New York Sanitary Fair newspaper, The Drum Beat. By then her name was beginning to have value; she was on her way to becoming the celebrity that Little Women would create in 1868. Dorry Emmer is making blocks of different sizes for her winter landscape blocks---just a spark of red in the stars. The Block Eight Hands Around is BlockBase #2168, first published by the Ladies' Art Company over a hundred years ago. Eight Hands Around by Dorry Emmer. Her Christmas version 8” Block (2-Inch Grid) A—Cut 1 square 2-1/2”. B—Cut 1 square 5-1/4”. Cut into 4 triangles with two diagonal cuts. You need 4. C—Cut 8 squares 2-7/8”. Cut each into 2 triangles with one diagonal cut. You need 16 triangles. 12” Block (3” Grid) A—Cut squares 3-1/2” B—Cut squares 7-1/4” C—Cut squares 3-7/8” 16” Block (4” Grid) A—Cut squares 4-1/2” B—Cut squares 9-1/4” C—Cut squares 4-7/8” D - Cut 4 small squares 8” - 1-1/2” 12” 2” 16” - 2-1/2" E - Cut 4 squares. Cut into 2 triangles with 1 diagonal cut. You need 8. 8” - 1-7/8” 12” - 2-3/8” 16” - 2-7/8” F - Cut 1 square. Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4. 8” - 3-1/4” 12” - 4-1/4” 16” - 5-1/4” Ladies's Legacy sketch A dance at the March house from an edition of Little Women. Eight Hands Around was a dance figure. Elizabeth Hawley West Virginia project & the Quilt Index Have few pictures of this particular double star quilt with the triangles in the corners A Stellar Set Louisa in Washington, from Hospital Sketches Two years ago we did an applique Block of the Month Hospital Sketches, inspired by Louisa's wartime work. The first block, a wreath or periwinkles, was for her: http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/01/hospital-sketches-1-periwinkle-wreath.html Periwinkle Wreath by Georgann Eglinski This month's set idea is a Periwinkle Wreath applique block alternating with the 16" star samplers. You can squeeze the wreath into a 16" finished square to make an 80" square quilt (12 pieced stars + 13 appliques.) Extra Reading & Watching See the 2009 PBS documentary in their American Masters series, "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women." You can stream it on their Passport feature and local stations occasionally replay it. And you can buy the video. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/novemberdecember/feature/little-woman Read a letter from Louisa nursing in Washington to Hannah Stevenson in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society here: http://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2168&img_step=1&mode=transcript#page1 And one from Hannah to her family nursing earlier in the war. http://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2163&img_step=1&mode=transcript#page1 Many of the views of the Alcotts by their friends and acquaintances come from Daniel Shealy's Alcott in Her Own Time, vignettes from memoirs. See a preview here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Alcott_in_Her_Own_Time/hAiAvvWP-pEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Daniel+Shealy%27s+Alcott+in+Her+Own+Time&printsec=frontcover Here's a book focusing on Louisa's war time nursing: Samantha Seiple, Louisa on the Front Lines https://www.google.com/books/edition/Louisa_on_the_Front_Lines/XYBfDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Samantha+Seiple,+Louisa+on+the+Front+Lines&pg=PT179&printsec=frontcover

Supporting the Civil War, the U.S. Sanitary Commission made quilts for injured soldiers.

Cotton Boll for Mollie (Chesnut?) One reason Mary Boykin Chesnut's book that reworks her Civil-War diaries is such a classic is her skillful development of character in the dialogue. The reader falls for a few of the dramatis personae, among them Molly her personal maid during slavery and a long-time friend and business partner. Molly, probably photographed in the early 1860s at the Quinby Studios in Charleston, from Mary Boykin Chesnut's photograph album In 1860 Kershaw County, South Carolina had 8,000 black inhabitants and 5,000 white. It's so hard to get even a glimpse of the African-American life during slavery but Molly's story as told by Mary gives us much. Mary's manuscripts at the South Carolinia Library University of South Carolina Despite her professed distaste for slavery Mary was totally dependent upon slaves, particularly at Mulberry plantation---doing just about nothing all day but reading and a little sewing of slave clothing for her mother-in-law, the plantation mistress. During the war when Mary's world expanded to Richmond and Columbia Molly often was in attendance, the behind-the-scenes genius of the Chesnuts' fabled parties. "My Molly" ran Mary's household, took care of her clothes, cooked her meals in gourmet fashion and gave her much advice, welcome or not. On a train trip in 1863 Molly decided to take on the bad manners of the Chesnut plantation overseer Adam Team. The train was crowded. Team got Mary two chairs, the extra for her feet and she slept. Molly got the floor with her head against a chair. She woke up when she heard Team bragging about the Chesnuts: " 'Listen, Missus, how loud Mars Adam Team is talking. And all about old Master and our business, and to strangers. It's a shame....how old old Master is and how rich he is and all that. I am going to tell him stop.' Up stalked Molly. 'Mars Adam, Missus say please don't talk so loud. When people travel they don't do that away." The Yard Molly, married to Lige, had several children, mostly cared for by her mother while she and Mary traveled. Mary mentioned a sick baby in 1861 and Molly had a six-month old in February, 1865, meaning she could not accompany Mary in her post-war escape from South Carolina. Instead young Ellen went as Mary's personal maid with Laurence, James Chesnut's valet. Molly was probably sorely missed as Ellen was new at the personal maid business, although enthusiastic to learn. Cotton Boll by Pat Styring Molly stayed behind with her children at the Mulberry plantation. "She remained to look after my things---Mrs. Preston's cow, etc.etc." Woman in the egg business Molly and Mary had been in the dairy business for a while. An 1861 entry in the manuscript diary: Molly come...the chicken business goes on finely. If I can only raise eggs & chickens & butter---a great fall off for a cotton planter. [Molly] says the negroes say nobody shall touch my poultry. 'Missis' things,' nobody shall meddle with.' " Plantation scene by the Quinby & Company Studio in Charleston In the fall Molly reported that the poultry business paid splendidly, but there was a problem with overseer Adam Team (she didn't like him--with good reason we can assume.) He took the best of their butter and "will not pay her for it." "Gesticulating round the room like the orator she was born...'He takes my butter and your things. His wife has grown so fat she has to go through the big gate---the little one too narrow for her now. No wonder Sundays they put two of your hams on their dinner table. Bless god! Two hams they eat." Sketch of a woman on the street in New Orleans In the butter and egg partnership Mary seems to have paid for the livestock and feed; Molly made butter, collected eggs and marketed them to their mutual benefit. This partnership on shares lasted long after the war, giving both cash in the terrible post-war economy. In the Chesnut's 1878 account book Colleen Glenney Boggs found an entry for Molly's wages: 3 dollars. Freedpeople outside their cabin near Camden, 1880s. Much of the Chesnuts' postwar income was based on rent for the former slave cabins at Mulberry to the former slaves. Portraits from Quinby's in Charleston Quinby Studios background includes a monumental column, a studio setting often seen in Southern portraits from the war years. Molly's has the column but a painted railing different from the rail seen in most Quinby photos like Mary Chesnut's on the left. We can guess Mary who collected photos commissioned Molly's portrait there. Block #8 Cotton Boll by Susannah Pangelinan Two of Mary's albums The Block Mary & Molly's joint endeavor, the butter and egg business, was certainly a step down for people connected at any level with an enormous cotton plantation. Molly's status was also connected to the extremely wealthy family she served. A cotton boll to recall the antebellum days seems appropriate. Late-19th/Early 20th Century Cotton Boll The Cotton Boll is a traditional regional Southern design. Quilters felt free to interpret it in many ways. 20th-century cotton boll Frances Johnston, North Carolina Museum of History Late 19th century Note the partial blocks. Applique to an 18-1/2" square or cut it larger and trim later. The Patterns One way to print these JPGS. Create a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11" or a word file. Click on the image above. Right click on it and save it to your file. Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". Note the inch square block for reference. Adjust the printed page size if necessary. Do not use tools like "Fit to page." Make templates. Add seams when cutting fabric. One block in a small quilt found in the Minnesota quilt project. Photo from the Quilt Index Pat Styring's center No rose but a bee. See a post on Cotton Boll quilts here: https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/08/cotton-boll-or-anthemion.html And Kathlyn Sullivan's chapter on the pattern in Mary W. Kerr's Southern Quilts An Issue with Molly The important issue with Mary Chesnut's diaries is that there are several versions---some edited by others, one drawn from Mary's actual manuscript diaries and the most famous her reworking of her memories and diaries into the large book Mary Chesnut's Civil War, published in 1981, edited by C. Vann Woodward. Molly's role (and name) varies from book to book. The first published edition (1905) tells us of an encounter with a runaway on March 8, 1861. The actual manuscript diary: "Yesterday I met Mr. DeSaussure run away William. He dodged into a shop---but I saw him peeping at me from behind the door. He looked old and weather beaten & the very expression of his face has changed for the worse." The first edition was edited by friends after Mary's death from her reworked manuscript in which Mary enlarged upon the story, recording her memories of William and his skills and a remark Molly made. "Met a distinguished gentleman... William, Mrs. de Saussure's former coachman.... Night after night we used to meet him as fiddler-in-chief of all our parties. He sat in solemn dignity, making faces over his bow, and patting his foot with an emphasis that shook the floor. We gave him five dollars a night; that was his price.... Now he is a shabby creature indeed. He must have felt his fallen fortunes when he met me - one who knew him in his prosperity. He ran away, this stately yellow gentleman, from wife and children, home and comfort. My Molly asked him 'Why? Miss Liza was good to you, I know.' I wonder who owns him now; he looked forlorn." In the 1981 book Molly is called Polly and William replies to Molly's impertinent question. "My Polly asked him "Why? Miss Liza was good to you, I know." I wonder who owns him now; he looked forlorn. 'Yes, but Marster was so mean. He was not bad. He was mean. In the twenty years I lived in his yard he never gave me a fourpence---that is, in money.' " Well, what are we to make of this? What actually happened and who is "My Molly"? who appears so often in the reworked book and less often in the actual diary, which refers to Molly 6 times in the index. The 1981 Woodward version has 67 references in its index. Some critics think of the final Molly character as a conduit for Mary's thoughts (particularly those on slavery), an effective literary device. Imaginary Molly or not, she is one of the most endearing characters in a book rather sparsely populated with them. An 1883 letter to Varina Davis from Mary tells her to be grateful for her children. "I have nothing but Polish chickens---and Jersey calves." Sue Garman had a pattern The original sketch 1-8 Extra Reading Read about Mary's photo albums here: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/faces-of-the-civil-war-mary-chesnut-s-photographs-back/article_b4e3fc07-cf60-5427-84b2-294048c46752.html Mary Chesnut's Illustrated Diary Mulberry Edition Boxed Set: Volume 1: A Diary from Dixie and Volume 2: Mary Chesnut's Civil War Photographic Album by Martha Deniels, Barbara McCarthy & James Kibler. In her book Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War Colleen Glenney Bogg has a thoughtful discussion of Molly and the meaning of Molly's photo in the album. Preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=KHCADwAAQBAJ&dq=colleen+glenney+boggs+molly+chesnut&source=gbs_navlinks_s A Post Script: Another Mollie Chesnut 1921 Two 20th-century documents, a 1921 death certificate for a baby named Jessie Mae Jackson who died of "colitis" at 11 months; her mother's maiden name Mollie Chesnut---perhaps a descendant of the earlier Mollie. The younger Mollie and husband Willie Jackson were not lucky. Another daughter was stillborn in 1925. 1925 The Jacksons lived in Cheraw, about 100 miles northeast of Columbia. On this form Chesnut is spelled with two T's. Temperance Neely Smoot's version of the cotton boll. Alamance County, North Carolina, late 19th century? http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/02/buried-with-silver-temperance-smoots.html

Yankee Diary by Barbara Brackman 42" x 54" Quilted by Lori Kukuk Yankee Diary by Denniele Bohannon Here's how Denniele and I set ours Here are the setting instructions for the Yankee Diary quilt. As we've sewn along you've received setting instructions for the blocks but here's a summary. Do refer back to each block pattern for more information. The basic set is two sections, top and bottom. The top section is made of of 3 strips. Top left Top Center Top Right The bottom section is two rectangles Refer to Block 11 for instructions for placing the flag in the dog's mouth. Bottom left Bottom Right The only extra piece you need for my set is a strip cut 12=1/2" x 3-1/2" that goes below the flag Becky Brown's set is a little bit different using all the parts. She has a checkerboard in the lower left corner which I forgot to put in. Next Wednesday: Borders. Nope. Next Wednesday fabric requirements and setting for next year's Antebellum Album Block of the Month. Borders for this one and the rest of Carrie's story on January 10.

Reproduction Quilts & Fabric

Block #3 New Garden Star by Jean Stanclift New Garden Star layers the classic eight-pointed star atop a four-pointed star. The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop New Garden Friends' Meeting House, Indiana About 2008 The new star pattern is named for the New Garden Meeting House where Catherine Coffin, her family and friends offered help to many fugitive slaves. Their surviving minute book records the day-to-day financial details of the Underground Railroad, as in an 1849 entry about efforts "to procure a home for Marian Danse." The committee reported that "she has been removed to Canada at an expense of $20." Catherine White Coffin in her 70s, portrait from her husband's 1876 book. In 1826, young Catherine White Coffin, husband Levi and baby Jesse moved from New Garden, North Carolina, to Indiana for reasons that remain a bit mysterious. Like other westering couples they hoped to prosper. Levi flourished on the frontier, first as a merchant and later as a manufacturer of linseed oil. They chose the town of Newport because Quaker family and friends from Guilford County had also moved there, establishing a nearby meeting house they named New Garden after their old home. In a speech towards the end of his life Levi said North Carolina had become dangerous for the antislavery Quakers. In his autobiography he claimed to be surprised that the highway near his new home was a branch of what came to be known as the Underground Railroad. His protestation of ignorance has a false ring, however. For years members of their North Carolina community had been cautiously smuggling runaway slaves north to Friends in Richmond, Indiana. Catherine and Levi must have carefully chosen their new home north of Richmond. Thanks to their generosity, courage and organizational skills, the number of fugitives escaping through eastern Indiana increased significantly. The Coffin's Federal-style brick house, built in 1839, overlooks highway 27 in Fountain City, Indiana, the town they knew as Newport. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, restored and opened as a public museum in 1970 under the Indiana State Museum System The yellow star on the eastern border of Indiana is the general location of the Coffin's Indiana home. Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil (I FORGOT to post this yesterday, sorry you fans of D.C) Levi Coffin loved the metaphor of an underground railroad for the network of neighbors who helped escapees travel north. Of Newport he wrote, "The roads were always in running order, the connections were good, the conductors active and zealous, and there was no lack of passengers." "Aunt Katy" Coffin (1803-1881) was at the heart of the Newport trunk line. "There never was a night too cold, or dark or rainy, for her to get up at any hour, and prepare a meal for the poor fugitives….many a time 12, 15, and even 17 sat down," recalled her husband at their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. In the twenty years they lived in Newport, Catherine gave birth to five more children, two girls and three boys, so there was always a baby or toddler to care for in addition to numerous houseguests. She organized a sewing society that stitched clothes for fugitives. Agents would meet ragged runaways to assess clothing needs and sizes and then choose garments from the Antislavery Sewing Society depository at the Coffin house. Catherine was a woman "who wouldn't scare worth a cent," Levi bragged. Despite death threats, "they were never in the least terrified." As the years passed, the Quakers' Underground Railroad activities became accepted and they had little to fear in Newport. The "conductors" were politically and financially powerful and their Quaker neighbors, even those who felt no call to harbor ex-slaves, were not inclined to report fugitives to the sheriff. New Garden Star by Becky Brown Nathan Coggswell remembered transporting refugees in his ox cart north towards Canada. Most came to him from the Coffins' organization. "When there were women and children we had to rig out a covered wagon. We sometimes hung chairs, spinning wheels and other articles on the wagon to give the outfit the appearance of movers." Coggswell described the network of friends. "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We talked over the situation freely among ourselves, but said little or nothing to others. We had no signs or secret words." During the 1840s and 1850s as national consciousness of slavery's evils developed, the need for secrecy in eastern Indiana subsided. "It was soon considered a disgrace to interrupt a colored person. The danger was about over." New Garden Star by Becky Brown By then the Coffins had moved on to Cincinnati, again for vague reasons. Their 1847 visit was planned to be temporary but became permanent. Antislavery leaders requested Levi's help in running a store selling goods made by free labor there. Kentucky runaway Henry May had escaped, says the ad, "in all probability to Cincinnati, Ohio." 1838. But Cincinnati was the center of Underground Railroad activity along the Ohio/ Kentucky border. Unlike Newport, where the community agreed to ignore illegal activities, the river town was divided between antislavery and proslavery activists. Refugees crossing into the city were followed by masters who enlisted the authorities to return their human property and arrest anyone who helped in the escape. Levi Coffin, 1865 It seems that the Underground Railroad needed the Coffin's leadership and courage not so much for a store, but for the more dangerous job of smuggling refugees. Again Catherine fed and clothed people during their first days of freedom, but her Cincinnati house had a larger attic than the one in Newport. The 1860 census finds them maintaining a boarding house for 29 men and women ranging from 2 to 50 years old, an excellent cover for a underground railroad station. The Quaker standing in the back row is thought to be Levi Coffin and the bearded man at top right Jonathan Cable, who assisted Coffin. The runaway family may be a group Coffin recalled in his memoirs. Read the excerpt from Coffin's book here: http://www.nationalcenter.org/UndergroundRailroad.html Read more about the photo at the Fulton Sun: http://www.fultonsun.com/news/2011/feb/25/photo-reveals-family-connection-underground-railro/ In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Life Among the Lowly, the newspaper serial that came to be known as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Like many fiction writers, she drew composite characters based on real people. Her kind Indiana Quakers named Simeon and Rachel Halliday have much in common with the Coffins. The couple known for their secretiveness became public figures. Rachel Halliday from Uncle Tom's Cabin During the Civil War, the Coffins changed their focus to aiding freed people living in refugee camps. After the War, with their work done, the 1870 census counts them as living alone. The year before he died Levi published his autobiography, which added to their reputation as champions of freedom. Levi died in his eighties in 1877 and Catherine followed a few years later. The Coffin's tombstone, raised as "A Tribute from the Colored People of Cincinnati," remembers Catherine with "Her Work Well Done." Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil in last year's Moda collection Civil War Jubilee (Forgot to post this too yesterday) Make a Quilt a Month Set nine New Garden Star blocks side by side with a 3" border to create a 42" quilt. Alternate five blocks with one background and four with another and you will get a checkerboard effect behind the stars. What can we learn about the Underground Railroad from Catherine Coffin's story? The Coffin network of conductors was based on personal acquaintance, a chain of stations. As Nathan Coggswell wrote, "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We had no signs or secret words." LINKS Levi Coffin House is an Indiana State Historic Site, open to the public. http://indianamuseum.org/explore/levi-coffin-house Read about the free-labor cotton business at the Quaker Quilts blog by and Mary Holton Robare & Lynda Salter Chenowith: http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/07/levi-coffin-and-free-labor-cotton-goods_15.html PRIMARY SOURCES---MEMOIRS & MANUSCRIPTS Catherine Coffin's husband Levi published his autobiography in 1876. Many online book sites contain the full text of Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1876) Click on this link to see an 1880 version of the book. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/coffin/menu.html Documenting the American South (docsouth.com) is a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with full text versions of materials from their collection and others. Click this link to their home page and search by authors, titles or collections. http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html Levi Coffin's cousin Addison also wrote an autobiography about his work on the Underground Railroad. See the full text of Life and Travels of Addison Coffin Written by Himself (Cleveland: W, G. Hubbard, 1897) by going to Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZMJKMXqjM4C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=Life+and+Travels+of+Addison+Coffin&source=bl&ots=X8j_SYvTJH&sig=SKs04lQcCXCTW75kHws0G9FlAgY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IRLoUtfmKI_xqQHEloGQBQ&ved=0CGEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=Life%20and%20Travels%20of%20Addison%20Coffin&f=false You can read about the Coffins in their friend Laura Smith Haviland's autobiography, A Woman's Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. (Walden & Stowe, 1882) which is also available online at Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=LV7hAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Laura+Smith+Haviland.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oxLoUpjFBI-0rgGh9YH4Bg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Laura%20Smith%20Haviland.&f=false The Indiana Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has a remarkable collection of online manuscripts including the "Record of the Minutes of the New Garden Branch of the Committee on the Concerns of People of Color." To read these handwritten records, which begin after the Coffins moved to Cincinnati, click http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/ecplow&CISOPTR=35177&REC=17 The PALNI website also has more information about Catherine Coffin in the local history collection filed under the name of Robert Nixon Huff. Look for her obituary among the other materials from Wayne County. http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/search.php Click on the above link, which will bring you to the search page for PALNI and type the name Catherine Coffin in the search box. Then hit search. Click on the Huff collection (article 5). On the next page, scroll down the menu on the left until you see her name.

Block #3 New Garden Star by Jean Stanclift New Garden Star layers the classic eight-pointed star atop a four-pointed star. The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop New Garden Friends' Meeting House, Indiana About 2008 The new star pattern is named for the New Garden Meeting House where Catherine Coffin, her family and friends offered help to many fugitive slaves. Their surviving minute book records the day-to-day financial details of the Underground Railroad, as in an 1849 entry about efforts "to procure a home for Marian Danse." The committee reported that "she has been removed to Canada at an expense of $20." Catherine White Coffin in her 70s, portrait from her husband's 1876 book. In 1826, young Catherine White Coffin, husband Levi and baby Jesse moved from New Garden, North Carolina, to Indiana for reasons that remain a bit mysterious. Like other westering couples they hoped to prosper. Levi flourished on the frontier, first as a merchant and later as a manufacturer of linseed oil. They chose the town of Newport because Quaker family and friends from Guilford County had also moved there, establishing a nearby meeting house they named New Garden after their old home. In a speech towards the end of his life Levi said North Carolina had become dangerous for the antislavery Quakers. In his autobiography he claimed to be surprised that the highway near his new home was a branch of what came to be known as the Underground Railroad. His protestation of ignorance has a false ring, however. For years members of their North Carolina community had been cautiously smuggling runaway slaves north to Friends in Richmond, Indiana. Catherine and Levi must have carefully chosen their new home north of Richmond. Thanks to their generosity, courage and organizational skills, the number of fugitives escaping through eastern Indiana increased significantly. The Coffin's Federal-style brick house, built in 1839, overlooks highway 27 in Fountain City, Indiana, the town they knew as Newport. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, restored and opened as a public museum in 1970 under the Indiana State Museum System The yellow star on the eastern border of Indiana is the general location of the Coffin's Indiana home. Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil (I FORGOT to post this yesterday, sorry you fans of D.C) Levi Coffin loved the metaphor of an underground railroad for the network of neighbors who helped escapees travel north. Of Newport he wrote, "The roads were always in running order, the connections were good, the conductors active and zealous, and there was no lack of passengers." "Aunt Katy" Coffin (1803-1881) was at the heart of the Newport trunk line. "There never was a night too cold, or dark or rainy, for her to get up at any hour, and prepare a meal for the poor fugitives….many a time 12, 15, and even 17 sat down," recalled her husband at their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. In the twenty years they lived in Newport, Catherine gave birth to five more children, two girls and three boys, so there was always a baby or toddler to care for in addition to numerous houseguests. She organized a sewing society that stitched clothes for fugitives. Agents would meet ragged runaways to assess clothing needs and sizes and then choose garments from the Antislavery Sewing Society depository at the Coffin house. Catherine was a woman "who wouldn't scare worth a cent," Levi bragged. Despite death threats, "they were never in the least terrified." As the years passed, the Quakers' Underground Railroad activities became accepted and they had little to fear in Newport. The "conductors" were politically and financially powerful and their Quaker neighbors, even those who felt no call to harbor ex-slaves, were not inclined to report fugitives to the sheriff. New Garden Star by Becky Brown Nathan Coggswell remembered transporting refugees in his ox cart north towards Canada. Most came to him from the Coffins' organization. "When there were women and children we had to rig out a covered wagon. We sometimes hung chairs, spinning wheels and other articles on the wagon to give the outfit the appearance of movers." Coggswell described the network of friends. "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We talked over the situation freely among ourselves, but said little or nothing to others. We had no signs or secret words." During the 1840s and 1850s as national consciousness of slavery's evils developed, the need for secrecy in eastern Indiana subsided. "It was soon considered a disgrace to interrupt a colored person. The danger was about over." New Garden Star by Becky Brown By then the Coffins had moved on to Cincinnati, again for vague reasons. Their 1847 visit was planned to be temporary but became permanent. Antislavery leaders requested Levi's help in running a store selling goods made by free labor there. Kentucky runaway Henry May had escaped, says the ad, "in all probability to Cincinnati, Ohio." 1838. But Cincinnati was the center of Underground Railroad activity along the Ohio/ Kentucky border. Unlike Newport, where the community agreed to ignore illegal activities, the river town was divided between antislavery and proslavery activists. Refugees crossing into the city were followed by masters who enlisted the authorities to return their human property and arrest anyone who helped in the escape. Levi Coffin, 1865 It seems that the Underground Railroad needed the Coffin's leadership and courage not so much for a store, but for the more dangerous job of smuggling refugees. Again Catherine fed and clothed people during their first days of freedom, but her Cincinnati house had a larger attic than the one in Newport. The 1860 census finds them maintaining a boarding house for 29 men and women ranging from 2 to 50 years old, an excellent cover for a underground railroad station. The Quaker standing in the back row is thought to be Levi Coffin and the bearded man at top right Jonathan Cable, who assisted Coffin. The runaway family may be a group Coffin recalled in his memoirs. Read the excerpt from Coffin's book here: http://www.nationalcenter.org/UndergroundRailroad.html Read more about the photo at the Fulton Sun: http://www.fultonsun.com/news/2011/feb/25/photo-reveals-family-connection-underground-railro/ In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Life Among the Lowly, the newspaper serial that came to be known as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Like many fiction writers, she drew composite characters based on real people. Her kind Indiana Quakers named Simeon and Rachel Halliday have much in common with the Coffins. The couple known for their secretiveness became public figures. Rachel Halliday from Uncle Tom's Cabin During the Civil War, the Coffins changed their focus to aiding freed people living in refugee camps. After the War, with their work done, the 1870 census counts them as living alone. The year before he died Levi published his autobiography, which added to their reputation as champions of freedom. Levi died in his eighties in 1877 and Catherine followed a few years later. The Coffin's tombstone, raised as "A Tribute from the Colored People of Cincinnati," remembers Catherine with "Her Work Well Done." Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil in last year's Moda collection Civil War Jubilee (Forgot to post this too yesterday) Make a Quilt a Month Set nine New Garden Star blocks side by side with a 3" border to create a 42" quilt. Alternate five blocks with one background and four with another and you will get a checkerboard effect behind the stars. What can we learn about the Underground Railroad from Catherine Coffin's story? The Coffin network of conductors was based on personal acquaintance, a chain of stations. As Nathan Coggswell wrote, "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We had no signs or secret words." LINKS Levi Coffin House is an Indiana State Historic Site, open to the public. http://indianamuseum.org/explore/levi-coffin-house Read about the free-labor cotton business at the Quaker Quilts blog by and Mary Holton Robare & Lynda Salter Chenowith: http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/07/levi-coffin-and-free-labor-cotton-goods_15.html PRIMARY SOURCES---MEMOIRS & MANUSCRIPTS Catherine Coffin's husband Levi published his autobiography in 1876. Many online book sites contain the full text of Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1876) Click on this link to see an 1880 version of the book. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/coffin/menu.html Documenting the American South (docsouth.com) is a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with full text versions of materials from their collection and others. Click this link to their home page and search by authors, titles or collections. http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html Levi Coffin's cousin Addison also wrote an autobiography about his work on the Underground Railroad. See the full text of Life and Travels of Addison Coffin Written by Himself (Cleveland: W, G. Hubbard, 1897) by going to Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZMJKMXqjM4C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=Life+and+Travels+of+Addison+Coffin&source=bl&ots=X8j_SYvTJH&sig=SKs04lQcCXCTW75kHws0G9FlAgY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IRLoUtfmKI_xqQHEloGQBQ&ved=0CGEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=Life%20and%20Travels%20of%20Addison%20Coffin&f=false You can read about the Coffins in their friend Laura Smith Haviland's autobiography, A Woman's Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. (Walden & Stowe, 1882) which is also available online at Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=LV7hAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Laura+Smith+Haviland.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oxLoUpjFBI-0rgGh9YH4Bg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Laura%20Smith%20Haviland.&f=false The Indiana Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has a remarkable collection of online manuscripts including the "Record of the Minutes of the New Garden Branch of the Committee on the Concerns of People of Color." To read these handwritten records, which begin after the Coffins moved to Cincinnati, click http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/ecplow&CISOPTR=35177&REC=17 The PALNI website also has more information about Catherine Coffin in the local history collection filed under the name of Robert Nixon Huff. Look for her obituary among the other materials from Wayne County. http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/search.php Click on the above link, which will bring you to the search page for PALNI and type the name Catherine Coffin in the search box. Then hit search. Click on the Huff collection (article 5). On the next page, scroll down the menu on the left until you see her name.

Block 3 from Westering Women The Sweet Gum Leaf is one of my favorites. You may recognize your block in this collage I did of pictures from our Flickr group. A grid of 4x4 would make a 48" quilt. Just enough applique to keep you entertained during baseball season. And it gives me an excuse to show you this mid 19th century version from the Pat L. Nickols collection at the Mingei Museum. http://www.mingei.org/collection/signature-quilt-pieced-new-garden-friendship/

Hospital Sketches Block # 3 Love Apple by Becky Brown Our third block recalling Civil War hospitals focuses on Union hospital ships...

5 Madison Star by Becky Brown The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop In June, 1854 a woman who'd been hiding on the Kentucky bluffs overlooking the Ohio River found passage over the water to the free state of Indiana. Sympathetic Hoosiers hid her under hay stacks and brush heaps. Delia Webster had, declared the Madison Courier, "escaped on the 'underground railroad', vanished, vamoosed…" "Running Down Slaves With Dogs" Delia was not a fugitive slave but a notorious "negro stealer." After serving time in a Kentucky prison, she had purchased a Kentucky farm for a station on the Underground Railroad---an act defying both prudence and the Kentucky authorities. She was, "a very bold and defiant kind of woman, without a spark of feminine modesty," criticized the Louisville Democrat. Delia Ann Webster (1817-1876) about the time of the end of the Civil War Delia Webster's life story with its cliff-hanging moments and daring escapes reads like a melodrama. Like all melodramas, the story omits character shading to help us understand her motives and emotions. Webster never fit the stereotype of New England abolitionist illustrated in Albert D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi At 26 years of age she traveled from her Vermont home to Kentucky to teach. Delia apparently planned to lead a double life spiriting runaway slaves to safety as she taught their owners' children. Much of her Underground Railroad activity remains secret. Her best documented escapade, helping the Lewis & Harriet Hayden family in 1844, is known only because she and co-conspirator Calvin Fairbank were arrested, convicted and jailed in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Sentenced to two years, Delia served about six weeks as the prison's only female inmate. Her 1845 pardon has been attributed to her charm. She captivated Warden Newton Craig and his wife Lucy. Freed and famous, Delia returned to Vermont and published a book, an unreliable account of the Haydens' escape in answer to "low innuendoes and foul detraction." After four years she again traveled South, settling in Madison, Indiana, a town that was by accident of geography an important junction of the Underground Railroad. Routes for runaways from the Ohio River south of Indiana and Ohio up to Michigan and Canada. The arrow points to Madison. Just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Madison was perched between the river and a vertical slope covered with an unruly woodland where escapees could hide out in a forest of ridges and hollows. Delia is rumored to have helped many. Madison Star by Jean Stanclift Madison was divided between slavery's supporters and freedom's advocates.The notorious abolitionist was unwelcome even before she scandalized Madison's citizens by carrying on a very public relationship with the married Kentucky warden who'd signed her pardon. Kentucky's bluffs across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana today. It's said that Madison knew when Kentucky vigilantes were raiding Delia's farm by the glow of burning outbuildings on the ridge. After a few years, Delia wearied of waiting for fugitives to come to her and borrowed money from Warden Craig to buy farmland on the Kentucky plateau opposite Madison, a perfect temporary refuge for runaways on the first leg of the journey. Kentucky's slaveholders had only circumstantial evidence of her help with escapes. With Delia Webster living in Trimble County, the slave population declined. By 1854 affection between warden and ex-prisoner faded. Delia, long on nerve but short on discretion, published Craig's letters hoping to ruin his career. He retaliated by reviving the ten-year-old case against her for Harriet Hayden's rescue. (She'd served time only for helping Lewis Hayden.) Delia's much-publicized escape from her second Kentucky trial into the hills behind Madison eventually landed her in the city's jail, but Indiana courts set her free, refusing to return her. Delia realized Kentucky's danger and never crossed the river again. Stevens House, Vergennes, Vermont She went home to New England and spent the time before the Civil War writing and lecturing about her exploits and the evils of slavery. DELIA WEBSTER AGAIN. Her 1854 escape to Indiana received a good deal of newspaper coverage. See an article in the New York Times here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70E16FF3959157493C6AB178CD85F408584F9 This photograph of Delia and her sisters in their forties and fifties gives a glimpse of Delia's theatrical personality. Her sisters have dressed their hair in up-to-date style with center parts but Delia wears a fringe (bangs) with old-fashioned sausage curls, perhaps to recapture the look of her heyday in the 1840s. She's painted her lips and cheeks. She might have indulged in the plastic surgery of the era, having wax injected under her skin, as she bears little resemblance to her pleasantly aging sisters. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Delia lived into her mid eighties, dying in Des Moines in 1904, eccentric and mysterious to the end. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Make a Quilt a Month Set four Madison Stars side by side to make a small wall quilt. Keep the fabric in the center pinwheel the same but vary the colors in each block to create a sparkling quartet. Add a 2-inch finished inner border and a 4" finished outer border for a 36" square quilt. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Delia Webster's Story. Assisting escaping slaves was dangerous work. Agents were arrested and jailed by Southern authorities and occasionally executed by vigilantes. Delia served only six weeks for helping Lewis Hayden but Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in confinement for two separate convictions. Marker in Trimble County, Kentucky Links to More Information: You can read Delia Webster's account of her trial for aiding the Haydens in her pamphlet: Kentucky jurisprudence: a history of the trial of Miss Delia A. Webster at Lexington, Kentucky, Dec'r 17-21, 1844 before the Hon. Richard Buckner on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that commonwealth, with miscellaneous remarks, including her views on American slavery / written by herself. Click here to see it at the Kentucky Digital Library. http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7mcv4bpd7x_7? She described the escape rather unreliably and included trial transcripts and accounts of her imprisonment and pardon. She later claimed her father forced her to lie about the Haydens' escape. Her anti-slavery partner also wrote a memoir. Click here to read it at the Internet Archive: Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." https://archive.org/details/durringslavery00fairrich Lewis and Harriet Hayden wound up in Boston after Webster and Fairbank got them out of Kentucky. See a picture of their Boston house and read about their activities in the fight for freedom by clicking on this link: http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/lewis-and-harriet-hayden-house.htm Find Out More In Print For much more about Delia Webster's story see Randolph Paul Runyon's biography, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996). For a review of the book from H-Net Online click on this link: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15581857574286

Block #3 New Garden Star by Jean Stanclift New Garden Star layers the classic eight-pointed star atop a four-pointed star. The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop New Garden Friends' Meeting House, Indiana About 2008 The new star pattern is named for the New Garden Meeting House where Catherine Coffin, her family and friends offered help to many fugitive slaves. Their surviving minute book records the day-to-day financial details of the Underground Railroad, as in an 1849 entry about efforts "to procure a home for Marian Danse." The committee reported that "she has been removed to Canada at an expense of $20." Catherine White Coffin in her 70s, portrait from her husband's 1876 book. In 1826, young Catherine White Coffin, husband Levi and baby Jesse moved from New Garden, North Carolina, to Indiana for reasons that remain a bit mysterious. Like other westering couples they hoped to prosper. Levi flourished on the frontier, first as a merchant and later as a manufacturer of linseed oil. They chose the town of Newport because Quaker family and friends from Guilford County had also moved there, establishing a nearby meeting house they named New Garden after their old home. In a speech towards the end of his life Levi said North Carolina had become dangerous for the antislavery Quakers. In his autobiography he claimed to be surprised that the highway near his new home was a branch of what came to be known as the Underground Railroad. His protestation of ignorance has a false ring, however. For years members of their North Carolina community had been cautiously smuggling runaway slaves north to Friends in Richmond, Indiana. Catherine and Levi must have carefully chosen their new home north of Richmond. Thanks to their generosity, courage and organizational skills, the number of fugitives escaping through eastern Indiana increased significantly. The Coffin's Federal-style brick house, built in 1839, overlooks highway 27 in Fountain City, Indiana, the town they knew as Newport. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, restored and opened as a public museum in 1970 under the Indiana State Museum System The yellow star on the eastern border of Indiana is the general location of the Coffin's Indiana home. Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil (I FORGOT to post this yesterday, sorry you fans of D.C) Levi Coffin loved the metaphor of an underground railroad for the network of neighbors who helped escapees travel north. Of Newport he wrote, "The roads were always in running order, the connections were good, the conductors active and zealous, and there was no lack of passengers." "Aunt Katy" Coffin (1803-1881) was at the heart of the Newport trunk line. "There never was a night too cold, or dark or rainy, for her to get up at any hour, and prepare a meal for the poor fugitives….many a time 12, 15, and even 17 sat down," recalled her husband at their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. In the twenty years they lived in Newport, Catherine gave birth to five more children, two girls and three boys, so there was always a baby or toddler to care for in addition to numerous houseguests. She organized a sewing society that stitched clothes for fugitives. Agents would meet ragged runaways to assess clothing needs and sizes and then choose garments from the Antislavery Sewing Society depository at the Coffin house. Catherine was a woman "who wouldn't scare worth a cent," Levi bragged. Despite death threats, "they were never in the least terrified." As the years passed, the Quakers' Underground Railroad activities became accepted and they had little to fear in Newport. The "conductors" were politically and financially powerful and their Quaker neighbors, even those who felt no call to harbor ex-slaves, were not inclined to report fugitives to the sheriff. New Garden Star by Becky Brown Nathan Coggswell remembered transporting refugees in his ox cart north towards Canada. Most came to him from the Coffins' organization. "When there were women and children we had to rig out a covered wagon. We sometimes hung chairs, spinning wheels and other articles on the wagon to give the outfit the appearance of movers." Coggswell described the network of friends. "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We talked over the situation freely among ourselves, but said little or nothing to others. We had no signs or secret words." During the 1840s and 1850s as national consciousness of slavery's evils developed, the need for secrecy in eastern Indiana subsided. "It was soon considered a disgrace to interrupt a colored person. The danger was about over." New Garden Star by Becky Brown By then the Coffins had moved on to Cincinnati, again for vague reasons. Their 1847 visit was planned to be temporary but became permanent. Antislavery leaders requested Levi's help in running a store selling goods made by free labor there. Kentucky runaway Henry May had escaped, says the ad, "in all probability to Cincinnati, Ohio." 1838. But Cincinnati was the center of Underground Railroad activity along the Ohio/ Kentucky border. Unlike Newport, where the community agreed to ignore illegal activities, the river town was divided between antislavery and proslavery activists. Refugees crossing into the city were followed by masters who enlisted the authorities to return their human property and arrest anyone who helped in the escape. Levi Coffin, 1865 It seems that the Underground Railroad needed the Coffin's leadership and courage not so much for a store, but for the more dangerous job of smuggling refugees. Again Catherine fed and clothed people during their first days of freedom, but her Cincinnati house had a larger attic than the one in Newport. The 1860 census finds them maintaining a boarding house for 29 men and women ranging from 2 to 50 years old, an excellent cover for a underground railroad station. The Quaker standing in the back row is thought to be Levi Coffin and the bearded man at top right Jonathan Cable, who assisted Coffin. The runaway family may be a group Coffin recalled in his memoirs. Read the excerpt from Coffin's book here: http://www.nationalcenter.org/UndergroundRailroad.html Read more about the photo at the Fulton Sun: http://www.fultonsun.com/news/2011/feb/25/photo-reveals-family-connection-underground-railro/ In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Life Among the Lowly, the newspaper serial that came to be known as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Like many fiction writers, she drew composite characters based on real people. Her kind Indiana Quakers named Simeon and Rachel Halliday have much in common with the Coffins. The couple known for their secretiveness became public figures. Rachel Halliday from Uncle Tom's Cabin During the Civil War, the Coffins changed their focus to aiding freed people living in refugee camps. After the War, with their work done, the 1870 census counts them as living alone. The year before he died Levi published his autobiography, which added to their reputation as champions of freedom. Levi died in his eighties in 1877 and Catherine followed a few years later. The Coffin's tombstone, raised as "A Tribute from the Colored People of Cincinnati," remembers Catherine with "Her Work Well Done." Block #3 New Garden Star by Dustin Cecil in last year's Moda collection Civil War Jubilee (Forgot to post this too yesterday) Make a Quilt a Month Set nine New Garden Star blocks side by side with a 3" border to create a 42" quilt. Alternate five blocks with one background and four with another and you will get a checkerboard effect behind the stars. What can we learn about the Underground Railroad from Catherine Coffin's story? The Coffin network of conductors was based on personal acquaintance, a chain of stations. As Nathan Coggswell wrote, "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We had no signs or secret words." LINKS Levi Coffin House is an Indiana State Historic Site, open to the public. http://indianamuseum.org/explore/levi-coffin-house Read about the free-labor cotton business at the Quaker Quilts blog by and Mary Holton Robare & Lynda Salter Chenowith: http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/07/levi-coffin-and-free-labor-cotton-goods_15.html PRIMARY SOURCES---MEMOIRS & MANUSCRIPTS Catherine Coffin's husband Levi published his autobiography in 1876. Many online book sites contain the full text of Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1876) Click on this link to see an 1880 version of the book. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/coffin/menu.html Documenting the American South (docsouth.com) is a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with full text versions of materials from their collection and others. Click this link to their home page and search by authors, titles or collections. http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html Levi Coffin's cousin Addison also wrote an autobiography about his work on the Underground Railroad. See the full text of Life and Travels of Addison Coffin Written by Himself (Cleveland: W, G. Hubbard, 1897) by going to Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZMJKMXqjM4C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=Life+and+Travels+of+Addison+Coffin&source=bl&ots=X8j_SYvTJH&sig=SKs04lQcCXCTW75kHws0G9FlAgY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IRLoUtfmKI_xqQHEloGQBQ&ved=0CGEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=Life%20and%20Travels%20of%20Addison%20Coffin&f=false You can read about the Coffins in their friend Laura Smith Haviland's autobiography, A Woman's Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. (Walden & Stowe, 1882) which is also available online at Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=LV7hAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Laura+Smith+Haviland.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oxLoUpjFBI-0rgGh9YH4Bg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Laura%20Smith%20Haviland.&f=false The Indiana Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has a remarkable collection of online manuscripts including the "Record of the Minutes of the New Garden Branch of the Committee on the Concerns of People of Color." To read these handwritten records, which begin after the Coffins moved to Cincinnati, click http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/ecplow&CISOPTR=35177&REC=17 The PALNI website also has more information about Catherine Coffin in the local history collection filed under the name of Robert Nixon Huff. Look for her obituary among the other materials from Wayne County. http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/search.php Click on the above link, which will bring you to the search page for PALNI and type the name Catherine Coffin in the search box. Then hit search. Click on the Huff collection (article 5). On the next page, scroll down the menu on the left until you see her name.

Threads of Memory Block 1: Portsmouth Star by Becky Brown The first block in the 2104 block-of-the-month here at Civil War quilts is Portsmouth Star, a new block with an old-fashioned look, named for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The coastal town was a place of refuge for Ona Judge Staines and uncounted other African-Americans looking for liberty. The townspeople, as John Whipple informed George Washington in 1796, were “in favor of universal freedom.” Threads of Memory Block 1: Portsmouth Star by Jean Stanclift The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop On June 1st, 1796, a ship named the Nancy sailed into Portsmouth harbor near what is now the New Hampshire/Maine border. An African-American girl named Ona Marie Judge made her way from the ship to the town. Just fifteen, the runaway slave hoped to pass as a free black in Portsmouth's small African-American community. Ona's new life collapsed one day that summer when she passed an old acquaintance on the street. Elizabeth Langdon, eighteen-year-old daughter of New Hampshire's Senator, recognized the fugitive from visits to Ona's mistress's parlor. Elizabeth tried to say hello but Ona brushed by without a word, hoping the wealthy white girl would believe she'd been mistaken. Elizabeth was confident she knew Ona and word soon reached the Virginia slave owners that their property resided in New Hampshire. Ona's master and mistress wanted her back and knew they had constitutional rights to recover the runaway. Under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, Portsmouth's officials were obliged to arrest Ona and hold her. "Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair..." Ona's master was quite familiar with the Fugitive Slave Act. As President, George Washington had signed the law. Washington pressured federal appointees to return the girl he called Oney. His correspondence, visible online at the Library of Congress, tells some of the story. When Ona was in her seventies she talked to two newspaper correspondents about her escape. Their articles tell the other side. When they moved to the new capital of Philadelphia the first family brought eight slaves from their Virginia plantation. At the age of ten Ona became Martha Washington's personal maid. Oney "was handy and useful…being perfect Mistress of her needle," wrote Washington. The President's House in Philadelphia. Ona came to work here in 1790. She recalled that her life in the President's household posed no hardships but she wanted freedom, particularly after she learned the Washingtons planned to will her to granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis. Ona apparently did not care for Eliza Custis, a few years her junior. She was determined "never to be her slave." Gilbert Stuart painted this picture of Eliza Custis the year Ona ran away. Between Ona's opinion and the portrait, we get an idea of Eliza's personality. Realizing Washington's presidency would soon be over, Ona made the most of her last weeks in Philadelphia. "Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn't know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington's house while they were eating dinner." Ona's escape by ship took her from Philadelphia north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Captain John Bolles or Bowles Somehow she booked passage on the Nancy commanded by Captain John Bolles. "I never told his name till after he died, a few years since, lest they should punish him for bringing me away." Martha Washington with a slave By Edward Savage Like many slave holders, the Washingtons believed outsiders stirred up discontent. Martha was of the opinion that a deranged Frenchman had seduced Ona. Joseph Whipple, the New Hampshire official charged with returning Ona, explained that the escape was Ona's idea---her "thirst for compleat freedom…had been her only motive for absconding." An angry George Washington fussed, "I am sorry to give you, or any one else trouble on such a trifling occasion, but the ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant…." Letter from Whipple "I have ascertained the fact that the person mentioned is in this town." Whipple warned the Ex-President it would be difficult to persuade Ona and just as hard to kidnap her, despite the fact that New Hampshire still sanctioned slavery. "I am informed that many Slaves from the southern states have come to Massachusetts & some to New Hampshire, either of which States they consider as an asylum; the popular opinion here in favor of universal freedom has rendered it difficult to get them back to their masters." Washington instructed Whipple to use charm. "If she will return to her former service without obliging me to use compulsory means to effect it, her late conduct will be forgiven." Whipple should avoid violence, any measures that "would excite a mob or riot." Whipple's last letter on the topic, mailed right before Christmas 1796, announced the banns for Ona's marriage to Joseph Staines had been published. He was pessimistic he could act without causing the riot Washington hoped to avoid. Portsmouth Star by Becky Brown from my Ladies's Album reproduction collection for Moda--- in shops in March. Ona married sailor John Staines. A year passed in which she gave birth to daughter Eliza before she heard from the Washingtons again. Frustrated with Whipple's inaction, Washington sent nephew Burwell Bassett to retrieve her. Bassett tried persuasive lies, promising Ona that on her return the Washingtons would free her, something George Washington had actually dismissed as a bad example to the other slaves. Ona recalled her response to Bassett: "I am free now and choose to remain so." The Langdon's house, still standing, was a decade old at the time of the plot to kidnap Ona. Bassett returned to Portsmouth while John Staines was at sea, planning to take Ona and the baby by force. He sketched his plot to Elizabeth Langdon's father at whose home he was lodging. Senator John Langdon sent a messenger warning Ona to run. Senator John Langdon warned Ona of the Washingtons' kidnap plans. Portsmouth Star by Dustin Cecil in my Civil War Jubilee collection plus white. The story's end appeared in the newspaper account fifty years later: "She went to the stable and hired a boy with a horse and carriage to carry her to [the Jack's house] in Greenland [New Hampshire] where she now resides, a distance of eight miles, and remained there until her husband returned from sea." Washington Mourning Picture Published by Pember & Luzarder, 1800, from the Library of Congress Ona was unlikely to have mourned Washington's passing. Washington died late in 1799. "They never troubled me any more after he was gone." Ona and her husband raised two or three children in Portsmouth. After being widowed she returned to the house of her Greenland friends, the free black family of John Jacks. In the 1840s, newspapermen found her there, poor and ill but glad to tell her tale. Ona Judge Staines's story tells us of a network of help in the nation's early years, an Underground Railroad decades before that name or railroads of any kind appeared. Ona absconded on her own but she remained free due to the kindness of many people, among them friends in Philadelphia, ship captain John Bolles, Joseph Whipple who stubbornly refused to act in Washington's behalf, Senator Langdon who alerted her to flee and the Jacks family who took her in when she needed refuge. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Ona Judge's Story Officials often refused to enforce the slavery laws. Refugees like Ona could live out in the open because authorities did not enforce the laws. New Hampshire was a slave state in the 1790s and her owner had all the clout one could wish for, but officials like Whipple chose not to act. Others like Langdon surreptitiously assisted her. We can only guess their motives, but Whipple suggested that "popular opinion" in the town threatened civil disorder if Ona was arrested. You can find much more about Ona Judge Staines’s life by reading several primary documents online. Read two interviews by clicking on this link to a site about the President’s House in Philadelphia. http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/oneyinterview.htm Read correspondence between George Washington and Joseph Whipple concerning Ona by clicking on this link to the website of the Weeks Public Library in Greenland, New Hampshire. http://www.weekslibrary.org/ona_maria_judge.htm See three of Whipple’s letters by going to the Library of Congress website American Memory. Type Joseph Whipple in the search box at the top right. When the results appear, click on the three letters in the George Washington Papers collection near the top of the first page (letters 2, 3 and 4). www.memory.loc.gov Read more about Ona Judge Staines at these sites: http://www.weekslibrary.org/ona_maria_judge.htm http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/ona.html http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/news/images/senior_oney.pdf Portsmouth Star Dustin's All-Ticking Version This is real ticking---not a printed quilt-weight fabric. Options Make A Quilt A Month Set nine Portsmouth Star blocks together with a 3" border to create a 42" quilt. Alternate 5 blocks with one background and 4 with another for variety. Another Option You could rotate those smaller half-square triangles to create a layered look but it would require set-in seams (Y seams) in each corner. Calm down; you can do it.

Making a quilt is one of the most fun experiences you’ll ever have and it can actually prove to be super useful if you have any leftover fabric you need

Susan B Rogers quilt, 1867, Smithsonian Institution collection Susan's quilt is one of the samplers that provided inspiration for our 2017 Block of the Month Yankee Diary. It begins Wednesday, January 25. Susan B used a white background with various blues, reds and greens. Note the flags of striped fabric. Hers is set in conventional squares but we are going to be doing an irregular set with various sized and shaped blocks. I am doing mine in traditional colors like Susan B, primarily red, white and blue with green and yellow accents---no browns. Turkey red reproduction prints for the reds. Various bright and dark blues from my Union Blues and Baltimore Blues lines. A little gold in print and plain. Some rather odd olive greens for leaves. And the background is a plain white. Denniele is doing hers in red, white and blue. Her background is a plain navy blue. For the applique and piecing she's using some clear, bright reds and the blues are from Baltimore Blues Becky's background is a small print, a slightly gray shirting print. Her colors are red and green but in this block the red is pushed to pink and the green to a more pastel, clear green. Here she's pushed the red to madder orange. You'll be making some flags. I bought a fat quarter of a blue polka dot and a red zig-zag stripe. Denniele also used a zig-zag for her flags; Becky a traditional madder-style stripe. A fat quarter of each is enough but you may want a half yard so you can use the prints in other blocks too. Flag fabrics Here's the plan for the quilt finishing 42" x 54" The numbers are the monthly pattern numbers. Fabric Requirements I bought 3 yards of the background---I'm not planning a border. But if you want to add a 9" border to make the quilt 60" x 72" buy 1-3/4 yards. For the applique and piecing in the blocks you will want an assortment of prints (or maybe plains). You'll need the flag fabric (see above). Fat quarters: Perhaps 8 would be enough for the monthly blocks and checkerboard filler strips. It's going to be very scrappy so you probably can raid your stash for most of it. Block 6 in the diagram is a checkerboard filler. Other Color ideas. Below some samplers I found on the internet. First: Monochromes Red & white by whom? (see UPDATE below) Here's a sampler of irregular sized blocks, which is what we'll be doing. It looks great in red and white and the two-color combination unifies different sizes and blocks. Thanks to commenter Alwayssketpintap: "thought I'd share the designers of the red and white sampler shown above. They are the SentimentalStitches.net Gay Bomers and DearJane.com author, Brenda Papadakis. Their debut duet work was called Just Takes Two. Same sampler in two fabrics - recolored in blue and white. Shades of blue by whom? Thanks to Chickadee who says: The blue house quilt is called Indigo Manor by Louisa Otis. The pattern, called Meet Me at the Manor, was in Quiltmaker magazine. Isn't it beautiful? I've never made a monochromatic quilt but it is tempting. Almost black and white by Elisa Then there's sophisticated neutrals Farmhouse Spring Sampler. Colors pushed almost to grays. The kit is from The Cotton Patch---wools and cotton flannels. Settlers' Pride sampler by Maggie Bonanomi Wool on black. That Maggie look is a great look. Passion Flowers by Becky Goldsmith, 2008 And then there's Becky Goldsmith's take on traditional color.

Make your reading come alive with Google Lit Trips. Your students will love visiting places all over the world that are mentioned in your book.

I am beyond excited to share my latest labor of love with you! I am a history junkie as some of you know. I love how quilting tells the stories of our history, both personal and as a nation. Every stitch means something to someone and for us barn quilters...every paint stroke does too. Which is why I decided to create a Civil War Barn Quilt Collection for 2017. The Civil War Barn Quilt Collection This collection is a Block of the Month Club for anyone who loves to paint barn quilts. There are twelve blocks in the collection one for each month of the year. The monthly kits are $25.00 (shipping not included). Each Month you will receive a 12" hardwood square prepped for paint, the pattern of the month which includes a history of the block and how it fits into the quilt, and a link to a online class on how to paint your barn quilt. There are three ways to order the Civil War Barn Quilt Block of the Month. You can either order them monthly for $25.00, purchase the year in advance, or order the blocks already painted! For the month of January we are offering a special kick 0ff sale! Simple use the promo code TDBOM at check out and receive 15% off your order of anything in the Civil War Barn Quilt Block of the Month collection. Click on the link to My Shop to order! Union Square Barn Quilt January's block of the month is called the Union Square. I chose this block to begin the Civil War Barn Quilt Collection because of it's name and the need our country had then and now for unity. I am thankful that we live in a country that has so much diversity, and yet we are unified in our purposes of freedom for all. My ancestors came here for this purpose and fought for it during both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Their stories inspire me today. I can't wait to see all of the Civil War blocks that are created by you over this year! I have already pulled colors to paint the collection in a different color way. I'm telling you, it's addicting! Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest Barn Quilt Civil War Collection

Yesterday I googled, “How to boil an egg.” Don’t laugh! I have boiled an egg before. But sometimes the yolk is too soft, and sometimes it turns green. And the shell never, ever comes off nicely. So I

A blog about Civil War Quilts, reproduction fabrics, and block of the week quilt projects.

Help! The fabric is not enough to back a quilt. Is that you? Check out 5 ways to make a quilt back large enough with the stash you have.

Here is my June 2013 Crazy Quilt Block. I am so proud of this one. I think I might be getting the hang of this art- finally! I love every ...

One Block Takes On Many Different Looks! Deep, rich colors are simply stunning in this inviting quilt. It’s so easy to imagine curling up with it during cold weather. Part of the quilt’s charm is that each block is different. Actually, every block is the same but they’re all colored differently. Variations in color and …

Quilt block in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a couple of groups of album blocks with beautiful inking. And they have good shots of the signatures, which can be quite inspirational. Here are a few from a set of star blocks attributed to Malinda Gamble. To see these click here: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/search.html Search for QUILT BLOCK. You can't right click to save these so you might want to do a screen capture if something captures your eye. Maryland's Cecil Whig 1841 The album signers may have themselves been inspired by newspaper illustrations. Publishers could commission or buy small engravings for the masthead or advertisements. Baltimore Daily Clipper, 1846

Storm prints and cloud prints in Becky Brown's repro block. We have three more weeks to go in our Time Warp QuiltAlong. Variation on a cloud print in the background of DdwGram's Prussian blue repro star Storm print in the center of SF's repro block Front and back of a pieced pocket. The color and detail in the prints here define them as early-19th-century roller or cylinder prints. The look wasn't possible until roller technology developed after 1810 or so. Machine for engraving the detailed designs on cylinders, from Crookes's 1874 printing manual The invention of cylinder machine printing changed the efficiency of printing as well as the style. We've discussed examples such as eccentric prints and rainbow prints. A French sample book Detail, fine registration of many colors, and an expanding retail market created fashions in figures. Several of these trendy patterns had period names, which we'll discuss in the last few installments of our Time Warp. Cloud Prints The Broad Oak Mill by William Linton About 1850 Benjamin Hargreaves, who ran the British mill Broad Oak at Accrington, wrote his memoirs in which he remembered William Sykes as a talented designer: "He had been brought up [as an apprentice] designer, and had attended a night-school there when a youth, … one of the finest and most successful of his designs being the celebrated cloud pattern, as it was called, which displayed both the skill of the artist and the engraver, Potts, in an eminent degree." Hargreaves recalled the popularity of the cloud pattern when he introduced it 1823: "Not less than 30,000 pieces were printed." But he did not tell us what it looked like. Was Hargreaves referring to this style of print, swatches shown in an 1825 French mill book? This style is often seen in early 19th century quilts. They seem to be variations on the eccentric prints discussed in week 20 here: http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/05/stars-in-time-warp-20-excentric-prints.html Is that a cloud print at the top above (1317), a curvier, more natural play on the eccentric geometric (1320) at the bottom? Two reproductions by Nancy Gere Clouds? Storm Prints Another popular style, according to Hargreaves: "Freedom and elegance were manifested in one called the 'storm' pattern, from its appearance...waving moss blown by the wind: they still attract our admiration." Like this print in a quilt from the Winterthur Museum A hexagon block featuring "waving moss blown by the wind"... Feathers or waving moss? Collection of Old Sturbridge Village The French mill book The combination of a rotating swirl with stars or wheels was quite popular in the 1820-1840 era, perhaps related to the concurrent fashion for chintz palm trees Note the pale blue storm print in the center of this photo showing a detail of the Austen family quilt in the collection of Chawton Cottage. Storm prints seem to have been revived in the 1880-1910 period. Storm print, late 19th century. Another version about 1900 Hargreaves’s memories are useful in dating quilts. We can conclude that “cloud” and "storm" prints date to after 1820 or so. Reproductions A storm print from my Hartfield collection Storm prints are popular in reproduction prints and I see you readers have quite a few already. Amy A had one in her stash when she was making a green calico star. As did Penny L. for her shirting star And Here'sLucy Judie Rothermel in Old Sturbridge Village III What to Do With Your Stack of Stars Check Out Other Time Warper's Ideas Barbara S. Cynthia at Wabisabi Quilts Gladi is appliqueing a border Debra tried out a toile Nancy S has finished the top with a small striped sash. Rosemary had a celestial set in mind And she has enough leftover to combine with her Lucy Boston blocks Terry dressed up one set inside another star. And alternated with a fence rail

My Lincoln quilt is on the road to the quilters! The pattern came from Barbara Brackman and so did some of the fabric. Please read about the quilt on her blog here. It has only been a little over a year since I won the pattern and fabric so I am right on my normal schedule! I opted to make my blocks 8" instead of 12, so I made a few more. My finished quilt size is approx 64x 72. I had some of this awesome Lincoln fabric from my friend Jill and couldn't think of a more appropriate quilt to use it on. And I added some homespuns, one which had this slice in it I noticed while ironing the completed backing. I used some fusible and the same fabric and fused it closed from the opposite side. I'm sending it off to Diane, Butterfly Threads Quilting to do baptist fans for me. I knew this quilt would need a simple all over pattern. I'll be adding this quilt to my "Reruns; Quilts Inspired by the Past" lecture!! I hope you all are having a terrific week.

Birds in the Air by Becky Brown who writes: "My 'birds' are a little flock of blue birds - my grandmother called them the blue birds of happiness!" In 1861, as Southern states seceded, leaders justified their actions by expressing fears their Northern sisters were determined to abolish slavery in the entire Union. Florida's secession proclamation cited, "recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States.” In fact, most Northerners continued to ignore slavery's injustices and posed no threat to the South's "peculiar institution." Yet the minority who felt obligated to oppose human bondage were persistent and vocal. Abolitionist was the name for an activist who demanded the end of slavery. In 1784 the "Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage" was organized to reflect Quaker resistance to slavery. The Philadelphia Antislavery Society photographed in 1851 Women were active members of the antislavery societies. A cartoon satirizing Martin VanBuren's attempt to reach out to anti-slavery activitists features a female abolitionist, a favorite caricature. Abolitionists used a symbolic image of a kneeling slave, which had been designed to represent English anti-slavery societies and produced as a ceramic medallion by English potter Josiah Wedgwood in 1787. The idea of a durable, small china logo was brilliant publicity. Copies of the kneeling slave (and a female equivalent) are found on all manner of goods---posters, dinnerware, and textiles---on both sides of the Atlantic. The shackled woman on abolitionist china. One antislavery activist recalled purchasing "children's handkerchiefs at auction. Among them were those on the subjects of temperance, Sunday-schools, and abolition of slavery. The latter were particularly striking---a negro kneeling and chained, with the motto, 'Am I Not A Man and A Brother?' " Quilt attributed to the years 1830-1860, made by Deborah Coates, Pennsylvania. Quaker Deborah Coates might have cut a piece from a similar handkerchief for her silk quilt, one of the few surviving quilts with a reference to slavery. Deborah and her husband Lindley were active in anti-slavery politics and the Underground Railroad. In a central patch is a small copy of the abolitionist image with the words "Deliver me from the oppression of man." After Deborah's death in the 1880s, her offspring cut the abolitionist quilt in half, one side for each branch of the family. When their descendents decided to rejoin the pieces, they removed the binding and found the small image of the African man, which had been cut in half and hidden for decades. The quilt pattern she used was a variation of a popular block pieced of triangles. In 1929 quilt historian Ruth Finley listed names: Birds in the Air, Flying Birds or Flock of Geese. Although we cannot know what Deborah Coates called the pattern, the idea of birds in the air seems particularly appropriate for a block to recall the abolition societies. Patti Butcher Poe made this adaptation of Deborah Coate's quilt for my book Quilts From the Civil War. Cutting the 8" Finished Block A - Cut 3 light and 2 dark squares 3-1/2" Cut each in half with a single diagonal cut. You need 6 light triangles and 3 dark. B - Cut one dark square 8-7/8". Cut it in half with a single diagonal cut. You need one of those triangles. Becky wrote that she sprayed starch on the triangles to stabilize them as the seams are on the bias. The Coates quilt is now in the collection of the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum. See more about the museum at their website. http://quiltandtextilemuseum.com/qt/?page_id=42 Read more about the antislavery image on two blogposts I've done. http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/11/abolitionist-embroidery.html http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/11/abolitionist-embroidery-2.html And read more about Deborah Coates on the Sesquicentennial Blog maintained by the State Library of Kansas. Scroll down a bit. http://kansas150slk.blogspot.com/2010/09/kansas-quilters-and-kansas-quilts.html

People have long believed that the symbols used in quilts of the South during slavery were actually used as secret messages for slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Come and learn the meaning of the blocks said to have lent the slaves a helping hand to freedom.

I am SEW excited to invite you to ourStar Upon Stars Quilt Along!Beginning *New start date Wednesday, March 22nd, we will be reaching for the stars!Join us every Wednesday for 3 weeks on our Blog and YouTube Channel starting March 22ndto make this stunning design a reality.This blog is your guide for all the fabric and supplies you will need to make a beautiful quilt. Don't forget to sign up for our Newsletter and subscribe to our YouTube Channelto stay in orbit with us during this stellar Star