- Wholecloth Quilt
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Technical notes and description: Tabby-weave cotton face and back; cotton filling. This quilt shows the eagle spreading its wings without the usual framing. A coiled floral garland forms an exterior border. In the talons of the eagle are olive branches and spearheads, while thirty-three stars float above the halo. The figural elements have been given extra stuffing to raise them above the latticed ground of the quilt. Such enhancement has been referred to as stuffed-work, Marseilles, or trapunto quilting and is applied within the borders established by the quilting stitches that unite the face, back, and ordinary layer of filling.
Related examples: Carlisle 1957, pp. 10–11; Betterton 1978, p. 125.
Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
Provenance[Mary Allis Antiques, Southport, Connecticut]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, September 26, 1963; given to MFAH.
Exhibition History"American Traditions: Quilts and Coverlets 1760–1900," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 28, 2001– April 7, 2002.
"Miss Ima's Quilts," The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin, October 28, 2006–January 7, 2007.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
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