Panel #5 Part 2--Using Fabric Efficiently

Panel bedcover from the Wallace/Stevenson families

 Richburg, Chester County, South Carolina.

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian.

 "A type often found in the Carolinas."

The center of this medallion shows an efficient use of Panel #5

the fruit basket.

The maker cut up one panel, using the parts to compose her piece. She stitched the basket in the center, four corners in the corners and cut the scallop frame into four pieces to be rearranged.

She also had a dozen smaller panels (#17) and cut out the bouquets with lilies.

Panel #17

Same panel (the quilt photo may be flipped over)

The Wallace/Stevenson piece is an impressive bedcover designed by a clever seamstress without a lot of printed fabric or a lot of applique work. Here's a link:

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556253

Here's a variation on the same theme---panel parts used efficiently. In this one the scallops and panel corners frame the basket.

Four copies of  Panel # 7 fill in the space.

Quilt attributed to Sarah Alexander Harris Gilmer  (1806-1832)

Cabarrus County, North Carolina, pictured in 

The North Carolina Quilts book

No wasted chintz, no leftovers from one panel.

North Carolina Museum of History, from the MacMillan family

One the other hand, this North Carolina quilt had several leftover pieces.

Included

5 Panel Centers

11 frames - 1 complete, 10 quartered

18 corners

Missing Parts
6 quartered frames
2 corners

Winterthur Museum has another variation on using the panel parts--- curved scallops from the frame are reversed, a more graceful composition. They have no information posted about this quilt but odds are good it is from a Carolina family.

The corners use the pieces of Panel #12 in the same way---

its frame cut away and then expanded to fill more space

Panel #12 and its frame

Commercial production of stitched or basted panels would explain the abundance of panel corners and frames we see in some of these Carolina quilts. The efficiency of these distinctive arrangements seems to point to the planning of an efficient businesswoman.

The Mint Museum has a quilt attributed to Rocinda Winslow Wilson,

shown in Ellen Eanes article on Mecklenberg Quilts in Uncoverings

Rocinda's quilt looks far more labor intensive. It would be hard to make a living selling this much handwork with all those pieced stars and pieced border. Perhaps some hobbyist bought the center and framed it with her own ideas.

Collection of the Charleston Museum

The bedcover attributed to Hannah Noland Henderson features Panel #3, the trophy of arms in the center. Smaller oval panels are #6 and #32. The larger triangular pieces are all corners from Panel #5, the fruit basket. The maker had 14 corners, the leftovers from 4 fruit baskets, which she did not use in this quilt. What did she do with the 4 central baskets?

Williams family, Charleston Museum of Art

Make another quilt and sell it to someone else?

Collection of the New England Quilt Museum.

This quilt features the Princess Charlotte panel framed in the scalloped wreath from panel #5---the only parts of #5 in this particular quilt, which is probably English.

Collection of the Atlanta History Center

The presence of so much "cabbage"---left over scraps---from various panels does imply that the makers had access to a good deal of surplus panel parts. It's the type of fabric use one might see in a workshop producing numerous related pieces rather than in one individual hobbyist's sewing basket.

In Baltimore as well as in the Carolinas.

The Lassotovitch family spread from Baltimore

Our looking at the quilts, particularly those made from Panel #5, has led us to believe that many were produced by commercial workshops.

Ad in the Baltimore Pilot, 1840

"Just finished, a large supply of Comfortables, an excellent article for the approaching winter...."

This stock of warm bedding would not be what we are talking about.

After years of reading advertisements, fair records, diaries and letters we have yet found no mention of such places, but the bedcovers provide the evidence.

Looking at the photos of the Baltimore panel medallions in Dunton's book brings up another question. What happened to all the fruit panel corners and frames in Baltimore?

Plenty of parts but no fruit frames or corners

The DAR Museum's bedcover from the Volckening family

Floating peaches and pineapples from the corners.

One of the few Baltimore uses of the corners.

They must have done something with the scalloped frames and

corners. You don't throw out good chintz.

More careful cutting with Panel #2

Margaret Selena Perkins (1808-1883)

MESDA Collection

Margaret's quilt has a unique solution to the cutting corners issue.

It's a fruit tree.

Collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum

Sometimes you get the idea the artist is just not as good at choosing, cutting and composing as other seamstresses.The parts are in the quilt above--- but there may be just too many. She should have left some in the cabbage basket.

See a post on the old-fashioned term cabbage for sewing scraps here:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-cabbage.html