QuiltHistorySouth: Fan Quilting: Where & When

Quilt from Mary Kerr's collection with fan quilting

Kelly had a question:

"Does the Baptist fan quilting design have any southern roots or is it more common in one area of the country or another?"

Joy who grew up in Virginia had an answer:

"I'm not knowledgeable enough to say that it is strictly, or even mostly, a southern pattern. However, I will say that I was an adult before I found out that there was any other way to quilt a quilt! No quilt I had ever seen (in Virginia) was quilted any other way."

Virginian Lura Stanley showed folklorist Geraldine Johnson a

quilt her grandmother had made. Looks to be about 1890-1920.

Picture from the Library of Congress's

Blue Ridge Parkway project.

Posts and comments on fan quilting were helpful in trying to figure out regional style, one reason our Facebook page is so useful. As Julie S recently put it:

"This is good and informative conversation. Thanks to all. We're simply attempting to so some sleuthing, and get input from all who have ideas to share -- so we can better understand regional characteristics and differences. Open doors, and get us to be observant and thinking critically. Appreciate all input."

Summary of what we learned:

Fan quilting done everywhere but particularly popular with Southern quilters, especially with heavy batts and closely stitched curves---sometimes double lines---good clue to a Southern quilt.

Fan quilting is on the checklist of Upcountry Southern, Solid Color Quilts

as a good clue to region and date.

We had a lot to say. Threads organized here around topics. We can start with the names for the design. Kelly called it Baptist fan, a term that communicates quite well today. Like cheddar for chrome orange or fussycutting for focusing on a print figure, the term is shorthand and efficient but not traditional.

Ca. 1910 quilt signed Effie Mae Johnson advertised on

Ebay as "hand quilted Baptist style" ---

the shorthand gets shorter.

I did a little Google Books research on the earliest use of "Baptist fan" and was alarmed to find myself as an early reference, as I used the term in Clues in the Calico in 1989. My source: A Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilt magazine article on quilts from Missouri in which Suellen Meyer from St Louis wrote about the Baptist fan, perhaps inspired by the cardboard church fans used as a template. Another published name: Rainbow, which was in the Bresenhan & Puentes book on Texas Quilts, Lone Stars. Ramsey & Waldvogel in Quilts of Tennessee described it as elbow quilting.

Photograph late 19th century (?)

Jo from Tennessee:

"The term Baptist Fan always hits my funny bone with a snicker. Growing up with strict Southern Baptist and Primitive Baptist associations and a huge family base of quilters who favored fan quilting, the term would have been frowned upon and hushed quickly. Also our church fans at the pews were rectangles not curves."

A church or funeral home fan

Methodist fan is another term in use today but it doesn't roll off the tongue. What about the Presbyterians and the Church of Christ?

Jo thought the name for the curved pattern might reflect the movement of the cardboard fans.

Claire Leighton's lithograph "Quilting Party"

stylizes what she saw in North Carolina

in the 1930s.

Comments and posts discussed the source for the design.

Pepper thought the pattern a casual cousin to "nice and neat English clamshell quilting", which others agreed with. In typical American style says she, "Stuff gets here to the US and starts to sprawl!"

Marie Webster illustration of shell quilting and fans

from her 1915 book. She quoted Englishwoman Elizabeth Glaister:

“A sort of shell pattern was a favourite for quilting."

Shell quilting in a Southern panel chintz from about 1830-1850.

Kay T said: "It seems clear that quilting styles were passed from England to the US"

Shell and double shell quilting in a North Carolina

quilt dated 1826 by Ann E Hill from the North Carolina project.

It's gridded off in squares and in every other square is a single shell pattern.

Shell quilting in an applique dated 1877 by Emma Poovey, Lincoln

County, North Carolina. North Carolina project & the Quilt Index.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-E54

Ebay quilt fitting definition of an Upcountry Southern Solid Color Quilt

1880-1930

We have no trouble defining shell quilting vs. fan quilting but how long has fan quilting been done in the U.S.?

Kay B posted a photo of a ca.1850 chintz quilt with fan quilting

from her collection. Here's a detail.

Joy showed a wool whole cloth quilt

"Made by my great-great-grandmother Rebecca Ely Reasor in Lee County, Virginia, about 1860, quilted in fans, very worn (was used on the bed for a hundred years!) and it's definitely not what we think of as early whole cloth with intricate designs. Rebecca started with the sheep--sheared, carded, spun, wove, dyed, sewed, and quilted it all herself. It's 100% wool, even the quilting thread. The batting is thick natural wool. Definitely a utility quilt. We had two of them--my brother owns the purple one. That side of my family was mostly English and German."

Joy's family quilt looks very much like this one captioned

Kentucky Linsey Quilt, implying a warp

of wool and weft of cotton or linen.

Detail of a homespun ( possibly actually spun at home)

wool quilt from a Skinner auction. Because such

fabric was produced over generations it's hard to date these wool quilts.

When I wrote Clues in the Calico in the late 1980s I analyzed a database of about 1,000 date inscribed quilts. I found out a few things about fan quilting but I had only 16 date-inscribed quilts with the pattern. Of those 13 were dated after 1900, indicating that even though you see it in the 19th century it's a pretty good clue to a post 1900 date.

One exception would be as a border pattern in earlier quilts like this

spectacular chintz quilt from the collection of the New England quilt museum.

Probably the kind of thing Marie Webster had in mind.

In West Virginia Quilts & Quiltmakers Fawn Valentine wrote:

"While twentieth-century instructional manuals illustrate a row of fans for border quilting, and early nineteenth-century chintz quilts are seen to bear fan quilting in the borders, instructions in allover fan quilting was not published until 1993, by Gwen Marston in a series of magazine articles."

I have a much larger pictorial database now so I spent a little time scrolling through pictures, thinking I'd show the earliest dated quilt in the style I had. So far here it is: