Description:
Appliqued, cotton quilt laid out in side-by-side blocks (6 vertical rows, 5 horizontal rows) with plain and printed, plain weave cotton in red and green on a white ground with a variety of red and green wreaths and floral sprays, and a four-sided, red and white floral border; four-piece, white cotton backing; and cotton batting. The quilting is done in-the-ditch with diagonal parallel line in the background and chevron double lines in the border, at approximately 9 quilting stitches per inch. The use of red and green enjoyed great popularity between the 1830s and 1890. The state of dye technology at this time helped make the physical survival of red and green quilts possible. "Turkey" red, initially a dye process using the roots of the madder plant, was perfected in the Ottoman empire of the eastern Mediterranean area. By the mid 18th century, English and French textile printers used this multi-step technique to produce a fast color. While it tended to fade to a strawberry pink, it did not bleed onto other fabrics in a pieced design. Greens used in pre-Civil War quilts often were produced in a two-step process (over-dyeing blue and yellow) using both mineral and vegetable sources, which tended to fade to blue or tan. The quilt has advanced deterioration in the border and with some of the red deterioration due to the printing process and abrasion.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+V.017 |
