Bluework Embroidery History
Part I
by Patricia L. Cummings
photos by James Cummings
Bluework embroidery has graced the surface of American and European textiles since the early twentieth century. Bluework is an offshoot of Victorian Redwork, a popular form of late nineteenth century embroidery. In this kind of needlework, only the outline of a shape is embroidered. Certain influences such as the availability of pre-stamped Penny Squares, as well as stamping kits so that women easily could transfer designs to muslin, encouraged this type of surface embroidery. Women's journals provided yet another incentive: free collections of motifs, when subscriptions were renewed. Availability of fabric, colorfast threads, and ready-made designs, all contributed to the spread of outline stitch embroidery.
The simple stitches for Bluework were Outline Stitch, Stem Stitch, French Knots, Straight Stitch, and sometimes Cross Stitch, yet these could transform everyday linens into elegant items. Doilies, curtain valances, tablecloths, lambrequins, quilts, summer spreads, and kitchen towels were among the array of of decorated cloth commodities.
Traditional Bluework often required just one color of thread to work a design. The background cloth was either bleached or unbleached muslin, or linen. Most often, the threads of choice were cotton embroidery floss or perle cotton. Favored design choices for Outline Stitch Embroidery, as a general category, include animals, flowers, children at play, famous people, birds, Kewpie dolls, and kitchen objects like teapots and utensils, and more recently, presidents of the United States.
Perhaps the reason why so many beautiful pieces of Bluework embroidery have survived is that they were not actually used for utilitarian purposes. In my collection, I do have a few pieces of Redwork and Bluework that clearly have been mended by an adroit needleworker. To throw away an otherwise lovely, beautifully stitched piece of embroidery, just because it has a tiny hole, would be a shame!
Bluework Coverlet with 72 designs
(Printed designs can be ordered on our Products Available page).
Early Twentieth Century “Coverlet”
We were so excited the day
that we found a seventy-two block, Bluework bedcovering in an antique
shop. We are left to wonder who might have created this lovely piece
of Bluework, exactly when, and the various sources from which she
gathered her designs. Most of the blocks are worked with dark blue
Indigo threads, although several feature a gray-blue color.
The two layer cotton coverlet appears to have been made for a child. Designs include blocks based on nursery rhymes, and images of circus animals, domestic and wild animals, birds, one frog, one botanical motif, and children. Also featured are the same “Teddy Bears” as those marketed for embroidered “Days of the Week” kitchen towels, in the early twentieth century.
President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, (U.S president from 1901-1909), has been linked to the name, “Teddy Bears.” One of these stories is as follows:
(He) enjoyed big game-hunting. According to one legend, the teddy bear received its birth at Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. To cheer Theodore Roosevelt after an unsuccessful day of hunting, Hotel Colorado maids presented him with a stuffed bear pieced together with scraps of fine material. Later, when he did bag a bear, his daughter Alice admired it saying, "I will call it Teddy."
Six of the 72 designs available for the coverlet described above.
See our Products Available page for information about ordering the designs.
Ruby Short McKim's Design Work
Designer, Ruby Short (McKim), created a number of series of designs for Outline Stitch Embroidery. “Bedtime Quilt,”is the correct name of her first quilt block series. May 7, 1916 was the first day of publication for this once-a-week pattern offering in the Sunday edition of The Kansas City Star. Ruby Short was not yet twenty-five years old when she had collaborated with Thorton Burgess, to create her angular configurations that depict various animals characters that appear in Burgess' books for children. They filed a joint copyright for the designs.
"The Bedtime Quilt" in Bluework, courtesy of Sandra Munsey.
Often, the “Bedtime Quilt” mistakenly has been called, “The Quaddy Quiltie Quilt.” Jill Sutton Filo, quilt historian, examines the reasons for this error in an article titled, “Ruby Short McKim: The Formative Years,” in Uncoverings 1996. She cites four possible reasons for the error. First of all, Ruby called each quilt block “a quiltie.” Secondly, the blocks could be drafted on a grid of quarter inch squares. Thirdly, “quadratic” means “square,” and lastly, all of the characters she is depicting in the quilt are “quadrupeds” - (four footed).
The quilt calls for eight
inch background squares. The animals are drawn in an unusual manner,
with straight lines and sharp angles. Inasmuch as she taught
embroidery to school children, she may have thought that straight
lines were easier for them to embroider.
An antique version of “Bedtime Quilt,” is shown here, courtesy of Sandra Munsey, quilt historian and collector. This quilt was worked on pre-marked blocks, and as Sandra points out, in one corner of each block is a number, presumably to guide the quiltmaker in assembling the quilt.
Another Bedcovering Recalls Nursery Rhymes
An embroidered,
cotton fabric, summer spread in the Munsey collection features
recognizable designs: “Little Miss Muffet,” “The Queen of
Hearts,” “Polly Put a Kettle On,” “Peter Picked a Peck of
Pickled Peppers,” “Three and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie,”
“Mary, Mary Quite Contrary,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Jack
and Jill Went Up the Hill,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack Be
Nimble, Jack Be Quick,” and “The Knave of Hearts,” and a few
other motifs, unrecognizable by us.
This summer spread is unique in that there are no corner quilt blocks. In this photo, you can see a background cloth behind it. courtesy of Sandra Munsey
The Nursery Rhyme Quilt (designer unknown) is quite unusual. There are fifteen blocks in all, set as three horizontal blocks and five vertical ones. The divisions of the blocks are created with lines of superimposed white perle cotton thread worked in Outline Stitch. The borders, consist of solid blue fabric but there are no corner squares at all! In a few cases, the motifs are large but are not centered within the design area and therefore, get lost in the border.
A third bedcovering in the Munsey collection is a Bluework Kewpie Quilt. This quilt was made with very light color thread on bleached muslin, and was extremely difficult to photograph. The quilt measures 35 1/4” x 45” long and consists of three horizontal blocks and four vertical ones, for a total of twelve designs. Both crosshatch and cable motifs were utilized to quilt the piece. Kewpies figures were the illustrated creations of early twentieth century artist, Rosie O'Neill, and they became popular in doll making and in needlework. The label on this quilt dates it to “circa 1920-1935.”
Interesting Small Pieces in Bluework
A pair of never-finished cotton, Bluework pillow tops have matching designs of a stylized flower. The motif has a center that looks like a flower with a double set of eight petals. Four sets of feather-like “leaves” that have six wedges each, emanate to each corner of the rectangles.
Note on March 17, 2009: We have received a message from someone who purchased a quilt with the following design in Northern California, from a Brookings, Oregon dealer. She wonders if originally this could have been sold as a quilt/pillow sham pattern. The size of individual blocks do not suggest "shams" to me. The source of this design is still unknown, but we will update you, as soon as we can track it down.
Each pillow top measures 16 7/8” x 18 ¼.” Only one of the pair is shown here.
A small Bluework tablecloth, in the same collection, has been worked predominantly in Lazy Daisy Stitches and Outline Stitch embroidery. A lovely crosshatch design with embedded French knots within the lines of stitches appears as a special design in each corner, as well as flowers and vines. This piece is worked with blue thread and measures 35 ¾” wide x 35 3/8.”
Dating Bluework Embroidery
In America, the inclusive dates for Bluework's popularity are elusive. However, many extant examples appear to be from circa 1910. The Latin word “circa,” placed before a date means the exact date, or ten years on either side of it. The examples of Bluework shown in this series of articles all date from the twentieth century. While there may be many other pieces that were made after 1910, I have never come across any examples of Bluework with a known pre-1900 date.
Blue: A Little History of the Color
Why was the color blue chosen for the thread used in Bluework? Availability is the key factor. Women wanted a thread that would not fade and Indigo-dyed thread fit the bill. Although we often think of Indigo as a navy blue in intensity, that is not the case. Indigo threads can be made in various gradations of saturation.
The book, Blue: The History of a Color, (Princeton University Press, English translation, 2001), will surprise you. Author, Michel Pastoureau, investigates how the color blue was discriminated against, over the centuries. Blue has been an elusive color for man to re-create. Nonetheless, early Christian mosaics, and later, miniatures used the color in a small way. The Celts and the Germans were some of the first to create clothing that was dyed with Woad, an alternative natural dye that has taken a back seat since the more widespread use of Indigo.
According to Pastoureau, some people attempted to demonize the color blue by using it to paint images of the devil and the underworld. However, they did not succeed. In the twelfth century, the color blue came to be associated with the robes of the Virgin Mary. Previously, darker, more somber colors had been used to paint her garments, to denote that she was still in mourning for her Son.
The foreword of the book Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill (Doubleday: 2006) shares this thought: “By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society.” A lot is said in that one statement! As blue became a preferred color in the Church, simultaneously, blue also became the preferred choice of Royalty.
Close-up of the center of a wall decoration rendered in Bluework.
Pastoureau reveals that the color blue once was considered a “hot”color. Today, we generally think of blue as very cool, in temperature. The color combination of blue and white has been widely seen in home decorating fabrics that feature Toile du Juoy prints. Most people today would think of blue and white as relaxing and soothing, with the color blue's association with water and sky.
Deerfield Embroidery
At the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, a lucrative cottage industry arose in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Ladies from the area, called themselves “The Blue and White Society,”and employed blue threads to work specific antique motifs onto white linen. The decorated, embroidered household linens were shipped off to sell to wealthy patrons, especially those who lived in Boston.
This type of blue and white embroidery resembled Crewel Embroidery more than “Bluework,” because the motifs have in-filling stitches. The work of the turn of the century embroiderers is characterized by use of the New England Laid Stitch, and by a stitched letter “D,” enclosed within a flax wheel, to denote that the item was authentically made in Deerfield.
Not a lot of their extant work remains, inasmuch as the consumers of these embroidered linens for home use would simply discard them, should they become soiled or damaged. The Museum, Historic Deerfield, offers iron transfer patterns and kits for Deerfield Embroidery, as well as one of the several books that have been written on the subject, Deerfield Embroidery by Margery Burnham Howe (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976). For more information, please see their website: http://www.historic-deerfield.org/ There is an additional file about Deerfield Embroidery at: http://www.quiltersmuse.com
Chinaware An Influence?
Blue and White Chinaware was no doubt an influence on needleworkers. Who could resist translating onto cloth the motifs of beautiful, flowing flowers, vines, trees, or pomegranates?
If you consider the examples of chinaware in blue and white that are shown here: a teapot and a platter, you will be able to understand the compelling influence these material goods may have had.
When one looks at history, it is easy to see that nothing occurs in a vacuum. There are so many influences of which we are not necessarily aware, until someone points out the connections. The book, Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield (Historic Deerfield, Inc., 2005) by Amanda E. Lange has a section entitled “Blue and White Porcelain,” (133-150). She demonstrates via the photos of the items and their descriptions that these blue and white punch bowls, dishes, covered tureens, and other items have been perennially popular, especially with the elite, and have been imported since the early 17th century.
Be sure to visit my summary of the needlework activities of the Deerfield Blue and White Society. Historic Deerfield, Inc. holds the original artifacts of the ladies of the group who decorated linens with blue and white threads as an entrepreneurial venture.
Patricia Cummings
September 8, 2007
Last but not least, my baby grandson, Patrick James Gorham, embroidered in Bluework.
How to Convert a Photo into a Line Drawing for the Purpose of Embroidering a Portrait of a Person by James Cummings- In this tutorial, Jim explains the steps and the tools needed to create a drawing for the purpose of outline stitch embroidery.
©Copyright 2007. Patricia and James Cummings, Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, NH. All rights reserved. Should you have a question, please contact us at: pat@quiltersmuse.com