Ruby McKim's State Flower Embroidery Blocks

In July 2008 I posted about some unique (to my eye) and beautiful embroidered state flower vintage blocks that were shown during a workshop I just taught, maker unknown. Soon after, as synchronicity would have it, I came across a quilt of them and found out it was Ruby McKim's state flower blocks. I asked for the readers input. and this post likely has more comments on it than any other. Ruby McKim was great and powerful ! Pigeon-holing her to any one look is a mistake.

The versatility of her designs is amazing and admirable. It is not automatic when I see unknown designs to think of her and it's a pleasure when I hear she was the designer. Wouldn't you have loved to spend time with Ruby in person, learn from her, be a student in her design classes?

Today I received more info as a comment worthy of posting here too and revisiting the other post. The original post about the quilt blocks is linked here and shows pictures, and the comment is from Juanita Moore. She writes:

Juanita Moore has left a new comment on your post "State Flower Embroidery Quilt Blocks Mystery Solve...": Ruby Short McKim was from Illinois and lived in Independence, Missouri most of her life after training at the New York City Parson School of Fine Arts.

McKim became known for her pieced quilt art-deco like designs, which she had prepared in simple lines for machine sewing, according to the History for the Heart Quilt Paths Across Illinois record of the Illinois Quilt Research Project, a book written by E. Duane Elbert and Rachel Kamm Elbert, and published in 1993 by Land of Lincoln Quilters Association.

The embroidered state flower designs were first published by the Illinois State Journal in Springfield, and released Sunday by Sunday to prepare for a contest at the end. There was both a local and a national contest. What a great way to sell newspapers!

Ruby also did newspaper columns on quilts, and ran a studio from which women ordered her patterns. You could get just a pattern for 20 cents and the whole Oriental Poppy pattern with cut-out fabric to piece for $4.50 God Bless!

Today you can find Ruby's patterns for sale here, but don't count on those same prices!
http://www.patchwork-quilt-patterns.com/ This site has the McKim 48 patterns available.

Thank you to all of the readers who submitted comments. it so much more fun when there is a dialogue on my blogs. I have returned to my professional life as a psychologist and I am loving it. I use meditation, mindfulness practices for stress reduction and pain relief and the new ways of talking and relating that help develop integration in the client's brain. These are well documented forms of therapy today that simply weren't known or known to be effective when I was practicing in the 1980s and 1990s. So it is my pleasure to be in the field again.

That said, my love of quilts and history, and talking with other quilters via my blog, is still alive and well, but a much smaller part of my life. When we do connect like this, it's pure pleasure, Thank you all for being there.

Namaste and many blessings, fabric and otherwise,

Kim




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Quilt of State Flower Embroidery blocks

http://quiltersspirit.blogspot.com/2008/07/state-flower-embroidery-quilt-blocks.html  First, read this post above and the 11 comments with it to know what generated this post.

This post comes to you today with much thanks to recent comments with info and interest in the embroidered state, flower and bird block quilt pictures in the post I wrote last July for this blog.

To every time there is a season! I may walk like a snail on this blog at times, but I do get there. As promised, here are pictures of a quilt from a reader, Lisa Fisk, whose mother has had the quilt with the same elegant blocks that I featured close-ups of in the post linked at the top of this post, hanging on her wall for 35 years!

Thank you Lisa for the pictures and information you have graciously sent about the quilt to be posted here.

The quilt was made by my great-grandmother Ivy Lett in the early 30s.  100% is hand stitched even though she had a machine.  Ivy Lett quilted the Little Boy Blue pattern when my grandmother had my father in 1935, she was relieved when my grandmother had another boy and not a girl since she didn't like the other pattern as well.

(I, Kim, think the enhanced version shows the blocks better, so I have taken the liberty to enhance the pictures, back to their original coloring perhaps. Here is a side by side of the current picture (L) and enhanced (R))

Ivy Lett made mostly patch work designs, most of them did not survive her daughter's care.  My grandmother (Birdeena Dooley) put all of the quilts in the thin plastic from the drycleaners to keep them 'good' ... in a closet in her house, most of my great grandmother's best work mildewed and could not be saved.  Only two of her other quilts have survived, my sister has those.

 

My grandmother didn't learn to quilt/applique/do any handiwork until she was over 50 and needed projects for a club she was in.  Five of those quilts have survived, four of the others almost mildewed to death but were saved by my mother.

Fun, huh? If you have information and pictures of any vintage state flower bird quilts and want to share them, send them to me and I'll post them on Quilters Spirit.  Any comments on this quilt or pattern, please leave your thoughts below. We'd love to hear more about this genre of quilts.

Piece,

Kim