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Obama Fabric & Obama Quilts

Miniquilts by Barbara Brackman, 2008. Obama's Rising Star block by Deb Rowden, 2009.

During the last Presidential campaign I Photoshopped some Obama campaign fabric to keep my friends entertained. I had an 1876 Washington print and put the candidate's face in the alternate wreaths with the campaign date 2008. And I altered an old campaign bandanna to make an Obama/Biden souvenir.

I've made several quilts from the small print and my friend Deb Rowden and I designed an Obama's Rising Star block for the Kansas City Star Books' webpage. Click here to see more about our block: www.pickledish.com.

You can't buy this fabric but you can print it yourself and make your own Obama quilt. To commemorate the current administration I have put some downloadable PDF's here that you can print onto fabric with your digital inkjet color printer.
OBAMA Fabric
Obama Biden Bandana

You need 8 1/2 x 11" fabric sheets that are treated to make them light fast and wash resistant. Check out this web page for Electric Quilt's treated sheets: Electric Quilt.

For more about Obama Quilts check the interviews with quiltmakers on the webpage of the Alliance for American Quilts by clicking here: Save Our Stories.

Sue Walen has published a book featuring the quilts shown at the Inauguration celebration. Click here: President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts.

FAQs

FAQ1. I need some of your older Moda® repro fabrics. Do you have any?
I don't keep much of the older collections in my fabric archives (the plastic tubs in my studio). If I need something I go online and use a search engine like Google or Yahoo to see if any online stores are offering any. A few weeks ago someone asked about Rose's Arbor from the Patterns of History collection I did several years ago. I searched by typing in the words: Moda Brackman "Patterns of History", putting the name of the collection in quotes. Several stores still had some of that particular piece. I also tried searching by typing in the words: Moda Brackman "Roses Arbor"---using the name of the particular print in quotes and found one shop that way. Another option is to ask my friend Sarah Fayman who owns Sarah's Fabrics in Lawrence, Kansas if she has any. Check out her web page: Sarah's Fabrics. Email her with specific names and numbers. She has a larger fabric archive than I do. Way larger. She may have it and she'd be glad to ship it to you.
Posted November, 2008.

FAQ2. Will you reprint Clues in the Calico?

My 1989 book on dating antique quilts has been out of print for years and bringing high prices in the used book market. You can buy a digital copy now for $19.95 from C&T Publishing. We scanned one of my two copies; it's exactly like the original. You can print it or keep it in a file where you can digitally search for words like "Turkey red" or "Amish." Buy it now with your PayPal account by clicking here:

A lot has changed in the world of quilt scholarship since then. In 1989 you could summarize quilt history in 200 pages. Today the information would require many volumes so I have expanded the information into other books and updated parts of Clues in other formats. The original book had 8 chapters beginning with an overview of quiltmaking, then a discussion of fiber & fabrics, color & dyes, cotton prints and quilt style. I have expanded and revised these sections into two books: America's Printed Fabrics: 1770-1890 and Making History: Quilts & Fabric from 1890-1970.These books cover cotton prints, dyes and quilt style in chronological order.

The chapters I haven't revised extensively in book format yet include those on Style and Pattern. I thought the best way to do that is again in chronological order. In 2009 I'm writing an online club called Clues in the Calico: America's Earliest Quilts, which looks at the earliest quilts in more detail, focusing on techniques and style. (See information on my home page.)

I updated the chapter on "Clues in Techniques" in a 2005 digital newsletter and now I have posted that information on my page here Clues in the Calico. Click on the files "Clues in Techniques" to download updated information in PDF files. There's no charge; just give credit if you use the information.

Posted May, 2009.

FAQ3. I'd like to know more about the name of my quilt, where it comes from, the symbolism behind the name.
My pattern Encyclopedias list published pattern names and their earliest printed sources, but I often get letters asking for more---where the names come from, how quilters designed patterns and gave them symbolic names. This question seems to summarize the confusion about quilt patterns and their meaning. As a non-fiction writer I have written everything I know about the name. Yet people think there should be more. I could only speculate and that would be fiction rather than quilt history.
The confusion about stories behind the names probably derives from the way pattern writers have tended to embellish their copy. In the late 1920s pattern columnist Ruby Short McKim knew names were an important aspect of quilts' popularity---"names that sparkle with a glint of imagination all of which adds much to the charm of calico cuttings and fine seams." In her syndicated newspaper features she sometimes added more than a glint of imagination. For her column on the "Old Time Bear's Paw Design" she wrote: "[It is] unquestionably of a frontier origin. Perhaps the pioneer father found such a track in his field or garden one morning and the mother bravely thought 'how interesting' instead of 'how dangerous.' Then we suppose she transferred it to linsey-woolsey or hickory-dyed jean, using the unworn parts of much bepatched garments into a sturdy quilt block. All of our series of old-time quilts have stories, more of them than we can possibly know, of course."
McKim's editorial "we suppose" is a rare caveat to the story's accuracy. Many tales of pattern origins were presented as fact. She was just one of several early twentieth-century pattern writers who mixed fiction and fact, a traditional way of writing about quilts that continues to encourage myths like the "Quilt Code," supposedly connected to the Underground Railroad.
Posted November, 2008.