Necessary Neutrals



Zinc

 Last weekend was Quilt Market in Kansas City....and the first question is always...what is trending? The quilt marketplace has been dominated by brights for a long time now...and so naturally as 'all fashion ends in excess' the shift is to neutrals even in reproductions.









Oyster


I found the usual 'color chips' of Turkey red, Chrome yellow, orange and green, chintzes, calicos and yarn dyes plus interesting neutrals.



Taupe



















Pearl
















Steel



Shirting dots

A dot....a most basic shape and a perennial favorite of textile designers. This sample has two colors, red and brown, in very orderly rows and is one of the patterns in my new line, Margo's Favorite Shirtings by Newcastle Fabrics, to be premiered at Quilt Market in Kansas City next week. Along with this document coloration there are two other combinations, black and taupe on off white, and black and medium blue on cream.




Variations on the theme.....

Pin dots....a important basic of quilting cottons during the mid/late 1970s....the second Quilt Revival of the 20th century.

A change in spacing...same simple dot.

Fabric printers of the early 19th century often called these...Polka Dots....trying to capitalize on the newest dance craze...the Polka, a Bohemian folk dance wildly popular in Great Britain and the United States by 1845.

Pairs of dots. This is also from my new line, Margo's Favorite Shirtings (19th century styles).

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A variety of dots.

An added element...a Spring Bouquet. This design is also from my new line of shirtings, to scale and the document color.

When the printing machine starts, you need to do 3,000 yards to be cost efficient. Most printers do not want all that yardage in the same color...so I choose one or two other colorations I think are typical for the time period. This design also comes in two shades of blue and two of lilac.








Happy Mother's Day !

Black Octagon



Motif from Black Octagon Chintz Center Panel



Last April I premiered 3 Chintz Center Panels. They have been well received and I was able to add 4 more designs during the following months.

I started with a local printer who does digital ink printing on paper (for local artists from the Paradise Valley) and fabric.
Early this year I decided to do a new panel with a black background. I quickly learned it was not possible with the current process. So....I started down a long long road determined to print this exquisite panel!

I have just approved the strike off on the Black Octagon Chintz Center Panel done with dyes on sheeting. It is color fast and should be available in late May.

The quilt was probably made in the UK, c. 1820-1840. The Chintz Center Panel is appliqued on a hexagon quilt, 98" X 93".




Black Octagon Panel, International Quilt Study Center
copyrighted image used with permission



Two blues and two greens

These are samples from the Dargate book....so c. 1830.

Classic blue/white indigo designs could be printed by resist or discharge at this time.  These more colorful designs required a few extra steps!

In the first example, a resist paste was applied to the design area before the first dye bath. If the resist is removed from a part of the leaf and the yardage re dyed..you would have a pale blue leaf where the resist was removed on the dark indigo background. If you remove more of the resist paste from the leaves and re dye again...'two blue' leaves on a dark background.

Now if you remove more resist from the tips of the 'to be green leaves' and add a protective resist over the leaves you want to remain '2 blues' and then process in a yellow dye bath....you wll also get leaves with 'two greens' and yellow tips. Because I can see the back of the fabric in the above example, I think the white was added in the final stage by discharge because the registration is perfect and the white area shows clearly on the back.

This second example required fewer steps. A resist paste was printed for the entire frond including berries at the base of the stem and the fabric is dyed in an indigo dye bath. Removing the leaf/stem resist for a second run through the indigo bath will give you a two blue design. If you now cover the right hand side of the frond with resist paste and dye the fabric yellow, you will have blue and green leaves with yellow stems.

Because once again I can see the back of the sample, I think the berries were also printed with resist initially. The final step would have been to remove that resist...revealing mainly white berries. These berries do not show through on the back of the fabric.

Because of the numerous steps required for these polychrome indigos, they were much more expensive than the basic blue/white indigo prints of the times.

Today was a Montana beautiful morning walking the dog. It was warm enough (45 degrees) for just a sweatshirt. The sun was shining, the sky a cornflower blue and the 4 surrounding mountain ranges plus the Horseshoe Hills to the northwest were all snow covered. Belle was more impressed with the dogs in the lease free area of Peet's Hill.

Western Wear



One of my favorite Vintage Images

I am preparing my final lecture for Apparel and Textiles. The topic is Menswear and Western Wear.  The Vintage Image to the left is one of my favorites...an iconic Dude Ranch scene!

Western Wear or cowboy dress is recognized around the world as a symbol of the independence and strength of the people of the American West.  The Western style evolved from the environment and the traditions of the vaqueros. Those early Mexican cowboys worked in  thorny vegetation in a hot dry climate. Their leather leg coverings and a wide brim hat became the Levi jeans and Stetson hat of the American cowboy. The bandanna, a working man's kerchief, added shade for the neck and protection for the mouth and nose during dusty cattle drives.  Those cattle drives started around the end of the Civil War. Thousands of Texas longhorns were trailed north to Kansas City with its vast stockyards and rail head. Novels, movies and Wild West shows featured the clothing of the actual cowboy dolled up for dramatic appeal
Teddy Roosevelt's love of the Western lifestyle, the novel, The Virginian, by Owen Wister along with the illustrations by Frederick Remington for Harper's Weekly all polished the image of the American cowboy. Wealthy easterners began visiting working ranches in the 1920s and soon adopted the clothing of the wranglers: cowboy hats, western style shirts, blue jeans and boots.
Posters by the Union Pacific also helped to romanticize the image of the West...and encouraged middle class vacationers to ride the train to a dude ranch location.
My friend Patrica from the G-M Ranch in Clyde Park, MT has told me how her family got into the dude ranch business. In 1934, the railroad contacted the ranches around Big Timber Montana...offering to send them paying guests. At that time, the ranch had just one cabin, Patricia's in laws actually moved into the barn that summer so those first guests could stay in the cabin. The business has grown to numerous cabins and a lodge with a commerical kitchen but the guests still help with the ranch work and enjoy daily horse back rides.

ps The trip to Havre was a delight! The area has some great quilters.

History of Chintz

I am scheduled for the 'premire' of my new lecture, History of Chintz, this coming Friday, April 20, 2012, in Havre, MT. The talk will be at the Holiday Village Community Center in Havre at 7 pm. It is free and open to the public. I am hoping some of you along the Hi line and southern Alberta or Saskatchewan might be able to come.

The illustration on the left is a corner in one of my Chintz Center Panels.

The heyday of the Center Panels is roughly 1820-1840. The bulk of my lecture leads up to this period. In reviewing my slides, I am amazed at how many early chintz pieces are predominately pink, red and blue. If I think of the colorfast natural dyes available at that time, 17th and 18th century, it does makes sense but I am always a little startled.

I had one of my students interview me last week for her writing class. One of the questions was 'Which Journals do you regularly read?'. I had to think for a minute..but did come up with some titles. I broughta several to the next class....and when handing them to her...I commented that most are a little dry and slow reading. I do however, try to read most selections because you never know just what you might find.
When I lecture about Europe and printed cottons of the 18th century...I always give the dates of the bans in France ( 1686-1759)  and England (1701-1774).  Importing of chintz and other cottons from India continued in Holland and printing for domestic use and export was done in the enclave of Marseilles.
My lecture talks about the various waves of Chinoiserie popular in England and France, the rise of Oberkampf at  Jouy after the ban was lifted in France and the classic Provencal designs. I recently read that Avignon, still a papal state until the French Revolution, was also exempt from the French fabric printing and wearing bans!

ps I will also be doing this presentation, History of Chintz, here in Bozeman on Friday night, August 17, 2012.  I hope you can come.

Strike off's

This week I received the strike off's of my new line, Divers 1863. This is the final stage before the 'button is pushed' and we have yardage! The screens, mesh of synthetic fibers or metal, are cut for rotary screen printing. ( 25 to 1,000 meters are printed per minute)
The example above....is the 'header' on the Cottonopia page..and my favorite in the book, Divers 1863.

For the strike off...the screen is still flat...and placed over a yard of greige goods. ( possbile test question...The base cloth used for printing today's quilt fabric is called ______  _________. The final is coming soon, April 30!)

Each pattern is tested in the various colorways. At this point, I can not change a design element but I can request changes in coloration.

If you look carefully at the right hand edge of this example...you can see a 'scalloped' edge from the screen. I hardly noticed it...too busy assessing the color.

I am always startled to see the particular edge. I forget the screens are not joined with a hard line...but more of a 'feathered' edge.

Goods will be available mid/late May. These patterns are 'to scale'. Document colors featured for this issue of Cottonopia. This is typical of fabrics being printed in France ( Mulhouse area) during the American Civil War.










I am trying to make my Apparel and Textiles class relevant for my students. Last week I began my lecture with a reference to a current controversy at Starbucks. I was delighted when my students knew about the 'pink color'.