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Page 200). Four eagles (Fig. 25, Page 45) in the corners of a quilt sur-
rounding concentric toothed circles (like cogs) comes from a pattern
that became popular for the American centennial of 1876. A bicenten-
nial quilt is made of red, white, and blue compass stars and is dated
in embroidery (Fig. 104, Page 129). Other pieces I consider as being
historical in the collection include another eagle quilt (Figure 24, Page
44), an Indian motif quilt (Fig. 385, Page 435), and a quilted map of
U.S. states, with appliqued state bird, flower, date of admission to the
Union (Fig. 384, Page 434.)
You will find samples of all of these quilts and many more pat-
terns in the collection. Some are pristine, artistic and valuable. Some
are roughed out on a sewing machine with loose threads hanging
so that only a collector could love them. And yes, I continue to Figure 5: Campaign ribbons of James
hoard—or, I mean, collect! Blaine and John Logan from "Hexagons
Pieced on Stiff Paper", Fig. 143, Page
171.

Documentation

In 2014 the collection was examined to clean, repair, restore or be
de-accessioned, as needed. A quilt was deaccessioned usually be-
cause of condition, but sometimes because it just didn’t enhance the
collection, or was okay but not wonderful. The quilts that remained
in the collection were then documented by pattern, age, provenance,
size, fabric, quilting, edging, backing, condition and comments as
described below. I do not report the purchase price or cost of compa-
rable quilts, because I figured I paid a fair market value at the time.
Otherwise, a few principles pertained to culling or keeping in the col-
lection: Condition is everything. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Rarity matters. Documenting a provenance raises value.

Pattern Name

I applied the popular name to a pattern as best as I could determine.
Pattern names can be misleading because some patterns are known
by many names. Hall and Kretsinger, in their book The Romance of the
Patchwork Quilt collected and named over 300 patterns to illustrate
in their book in 1936. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a
Figure 6: Patch from Redwork 1930s,
newspaper, the Kansas City Star printed geometric patterns that
Fig. 174, Page 204
reached readers in remote areas, and named many of the popular
patterns. “Redwork” is a quilt comprised of blocks embroidered with
red thread using commercial images as patterns. I’m not fond of red-
work, but thought that the collection needed a piece for completion
(Fig. 174, Page 204.) Many of its sentimental images date a quilt back
to Victorian times.