Successful Stories
The Sears Contest and Mountain Mist stories developed when one or two individuals began piecing together the stories that the companies had not thought to save. The research on both projects began in the in the early 1970s when communication between collectors and researchers was not as easy as today. You have the opportunity to add to well-known stories or even introduce the quilt world to an as yet untold story.
When Barbara Brackman began researching the winners of the 1933 Sears Quilt Contest, the Sears archives had precious few items pertaining to this important contest that attracted over 24,000 entries. Sears DID have some black-and-white photos and a list of the top 30 prize winners which had been published in a Sears Catalog after the contest. Using the list of winners and their hometowns, Brackman placed queries in their local newspapers. In this way, she located the quiltmakers' families or, in some cases, the winners themselves. One winner kept the entry brochure, a letter from Sears, the list of the winners, and a dated clipping from her local paper. Because Brackman had seen several examples of the entry brochure and the list of winners, the news account was the most valuable because it had a photograph of the top three quilts and the judges in the Philadelphia region. Sears Archives had photos of the first place winners of the ten regional winners, but not the second and third place winners.
When Evelyn Banner told Merikay Waldvogel her recently deceased aunt (Margaret Hays of Jonesborough, TN) had designed quilt patterns 1929-30 for Stearns & Foster's Mountain Mist pattern line AND she had saved over 100 letters and pattern drawings, this was a major discovery. As Stearns & Foster had merged with various companies, files pertaining to its quilt patterns had been lost. Round Robin pattern collectors in the 1970s had tried to compile complete sets of wrappers with the 100+ Mountain Mist patterns. Some collectors also saved the little Mountain Mist pattern catalogs and ads. The company's history was in the hands of collectors. The Stearns & Foster correspondence with Margaret Hays provided the keystone with information on pattern design, naming, and production. The discovery came at the time of the company's 150th anniversary celebration.
Merikay Waldvogel on Boxes Under the Bed™
My name is Merikay Waldvogel, a quilt historian living in Knoxville, Tennessee. After writing about 1930s quilts in Soft Covers for Hard Times (1990), I became an advocate for saving quilt paper from the 20th century.
Information about women, the 1930s, and quilts is NOT easy to find in public and academic libraries. When I interviewed women in their 80's who had quilted, I examined their quilts and eventually, they would show me their boxes containing cardboard templates, pencil drawings of quilt blocks, quilt pattern pamphlets, photos, and correspondence pertaining to their quilts. I was amazed at the kind of quilt information these boxes held. Historians would call these "primary sources." I felt like an archeologist coming upon pieces of a larger story, and like an archeologist I knew I would not ever find all the pieces.
The items saved depend on the quiltmaker's age, interests, and hometown. For example, a "tradtional" quiltmaker in Tennessee would more likely have collected Laura Wheeler quilt column clippings while a quiltmaker in Kansas or Oklahoma would have clippings from the Kansas City Star. Both pattern lines appeared as early as the 1930s. It is important to remember that a 20-year-old woman quilting in 1932 would be 82 years old in 2000. Most of these quiltmakers have passed away and their collections have been handed down or sold in estate sales.