Saturday, June 29, 2013

Woof! In Stitches

Just got this wonderful redwork embroidered quilt via gb-best. (An experienced, trustworthy Ebay seller with a sterling reputation...and good stuff.)


You should be asking...why call it 'redwork' when it's blue? Because to the appraiser, that's the official term, regardless of the color. Many of the first quilts in this style were stitched in Turkey red, because that was the most colorfast dye for a long time. And if you boiled your quilts and kitchen linens to get them clean (common practice for a long time), you wanted to be sure that your colors were going to stay. Why go through all that work, otherwise...

Gb-best dates this piece from the Thirties, and I'd agree -- the late Thirties, that is. Maybe even the early Forties, based on the darker blue. The kicker is the Scotty dog.


My favorite -- and probably a connection with President Roosevelt's dog Fala






No golden Labs, though -- poor Charley and Abby.


Quilting's a lot more elaborate than you'd normally see on a quilt of this type. Was it made by a dog-loving adult, rather than for a child? I'm guessing yes.
    I would have said this was a unique pattern, most probably traced from pages of a dog book or magazine. However, a fellow appraiser, Carol Elmore, tells me she has the same quilt, but in pink. She got hers in Missouri. (Gb-best isn't saying where hers came from. UPDATE: This quilt came from an estate in Pennsylvania.)
    Could they have been made by the same person, or mutual friends and relatives? I'm guessing this is a commercial pattern, but sure haven't noticed it, in more than two decades of research.

Unusual, however you put it. 

See more of gb-best's listings here.

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