DK Quilt Guild: A place for quilters to gather, share ideas, projects, and to make the world a better place, one quilt at a time. Join us and share your thoughts, projects, questions, and tips. Quilters here are at many different levels of skill. Beginners and non-quilters are welcome, too.
We NEED diarists! Your diary can be elaborate and full of photos, a simple story of your own quilting history or that of someone you love, a discussion of a current project or a technique you're learning, new adventures... You could post quilt retreat-day recipes (things like crockpot meals, so food appears without much attention from you)…
We could do show and tell or open thread, also, but either way, we need diarists to host. It is EASY if you're willing to take the chance.We NEED diarists! Your diary can be elaborate and full of photos, a simple story of your own quilting history or that of someone you love, a discussion of a current project or a technique you're learning, new adventures... You could post quilt retreat-day recipes (things like crockpot meals, so food appears without much attention from you)…
We could do show and tell or open thread, also, but either way, we need diarists to host. It is EASY if you're willing to take the chance.
Diary Schedule
4/14/24 — OPEN
4/21/24 — OPEN
4/28/24 — OPEN
5/05/24 — OPEN
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About a month ago I found myself in a local thrift shop.
This is not uncommon for me. The local thrift stores and antique malls are rich in excellent bargains: clothing worn only a few times, collectible books, glassware, craft supplies, fabric, even shoes and boots. I once found a $600 leather jacket from a Florentine atelier in mint condition for all of $25, and that’s only one of the many, many articles I’ve found at the Cancer Connection, the Cooley Dickinson Hospice Shop, the multi-dealer antiques shop in Auburn, and similar places. There have been times when everything I’ve worn except my underwear and socks have been purchased at a thrift shop or vintage store, and no one but me was the wiser.
This day I wasn’t planning to go shopping; I had a very specific errand to run in Northampton, and I pulled into the parking lot at the Hospice Shop on Route 9 solely so I could turn around instead of attempting a left turn on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon and clogging traffic in both directions. I hadn’t been there in a while, though, so I figured it would only be polite to stop in for a moment. I could browse, possibly pick up a book or a used CD for the car, and then be on my merry way.
I went through the clothing racks and saw nothing. Ditto the bookshelves, the glassware, the shoes, and even the books. I was just about to leave when I realized that I hadn’t looked at the bin of used fabric...and then I spotted something that I never expected to see outside of a museum
It was a small piece of quilted fabric, soft with age, rolled into a neat little cylinder among all the other neat little cylinders of 1970s upholstery fabric, novelty prints, polycotton flannel, and so on. I realized immediately that this was much older than anything else for sale in the bin (or possibly the whole shop), so I pulled it out and unrolled it.
I then nearly dropped it in shock as I recognized just what I had found. I took a moment recover my composure, went straight to the till, and paid $3 for what the volunteers had labelled “Vintage Scrap.”
It wasn’t until I got back into the car that I allowed myself to scream...because the “Vintage Scrap” was actually a fragment of two hundred year old indigo resist-print cotton.
Yes.
Really.
Now, initially I did not realize that the Vintage Scrap was quite that old. It was clearly Vintage if one was alive during the Grant administration — the buttery soft texture and finely layered batting clearly predated even the oldest American calicoes — but my initial guess was sometime around 1800-1820, possibly a bit later. Then I took some pictures, sent them to a couple of my fellow quilt historians, and was told that the Vintage Scrap was very definitely a late 18th century “resist print,” a European relative of batik where a cotton textile would be printed with a special paste, then dipped into an indigo vat to get the desired depth of color.
The paste would then washed off, leaving a distinctive white pattern on the dark blue ground. The technique was reasonably common before the introduction of printed calicoes in the early 1800’s, with examples found in Britain, America, and the Continent, but based on the pattern the Vintage Scrap was almost certainly French, likely made in Rouen no later than the 1780’s or early 1790’s.
How it ended up in the Hospice Shop is a good question. It’s likely to have belonged to one of the respectable middle class farming or merchant families that made their home in the Pioneer Valley in the mid to late 18th century, but it just as easily could have been purchased by someone in Boston, Hartford, or even Providence. Its original owner, whether it was used for a quilt or upholstery or bed hangings or something else, its exact age...there’s no way to tell at this point. It’s not even worth all that much except as a study piece; not only is it only a fragment, it’s badly faded in some areas, suggesting it was in direct sunlight for longer than it should have been.
As delighted as I am to have found the Vintage Scrap, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with it. I’m not a quilt collector, do not have a suitable display/storage unit for something this old, and I mainly study medieval and Renaissance quilts, not 18th century. So I might donate the Vintage Scrap to the auction at the American Quilt Studies Group Seminar next fall in Portland, or give it to a museum for their study collection. There’s no hurry.
Right now, though, the Vintage Scrap is neatly rolled up in a cotton bag in a safe place in my house. Whatever its ultimate fate, I’ll make sure that my little thrift shop find has a good home. It’s clearly had a rough time, and deserves that much consideration.
Have any of you found something similar in a thrift shop or an antique mall? I’ve included a few more pictures for the curious. Let me know if you have questions — enjoy!