Modern Color: Chambrays & Shirting Weaves

Quilt made from the Mountain Mist Sunflower pattern

mid-20th century

Marie Webster's design for her Sunflower appeared in the

 Ladies' Home Journal in 1912.

Mountain Mist began publishing a similar pattern in 1931, using Webster's solid colors and medallion format but further abstracting her naturalistic rendering of the plant. 

As I noted in a recent post Marie Webster was an important influence on 20th century quilts but her ideas had to wait until the technology for dyeing solid color cottons caught up. It isn't until the late 1920s that we start to see more reliable and more diverse solid cottons. Soon we also see more applique in the Webster style. Many pattern companies and kit companies sold interpretations of her designs, defining the "thirties quilt."

In the decades before the innovative dyes, Webster and others encouraged quiltmakers to use lighter colored fabrics, particularly solids, but where would the customer get new shades?

Quilt dated 1911

In pencil it says

Quilt made by Grandma Robertson

1911-91 Years

Grandma may have been born when Monroe was President

 but she knew what was fashionable in 1911.

Quilt dated 1912 and 1913

Chambray was one answer.

Chambray is a yarn-dyed fabric with a white warp and a colored weft. 

The darker yarns crossing the white yarn appear to be paler, one way to get a color-fast pastel.

Chambray shirts today

The blue in this log cabin dated 1921 is a chambray. The pale peach is a solid and there is no way to know what color it once was. Solid pastels tended to fade. Chambrays held their color better.

See this quilt at Rocky Mountain Quilts:

http://www.rockymountainquilts.com/files/antiquequilt_q8552.php

Blue chambray quilt, this one from 

Historic American Quilts' online catalog.

http://www.historic-american.com/20thCenturyQuilts.html

Another popular option: yarn-dyed stripes and plaids,

which held their color in the same way chambrays did.

Even if they fade chambrays and other yarn-dyed patterns tend to fade true to their original color rather than to a dun-colored tan, so they were a popular fabric in the teens and twenties. Not only functional but modern.

Quilt dated 1911-1912

They may not look so modern to us but

these were cutting edge 100 years ago.

You might want to read Virginia Gunn's take on shirtings and chambrays at the time in her article "The Gingham Dog or the Calico Cat: Grassroots Quilts of the Early Twentieth Century"  in the American Quilt Study Group's journal Uncoverings 2007 (Volume 28).
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/UCDetail.asp?ID=28