Customer Reviews

Dating Fabrics - A Color Guide: 1800-1960

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We've needed something like this for a long time - it will be especially helpful to those people who buy or sell old fabrics but who don't have years of experience to guide them on dating. Also very useful are Eileen's introductions to the various periods, explaining the dyes used, printing techniques, and how aging has affected the fabrics and dyes. I am an antiques dealer with a specialty in quilts and will recommend this to all my customers.

I've owned this book for two years and I find myself referring to it whenever I want to create a specific time period quilt. I took it with me to the quilt shop when I picked out the material for the 1912, Lady In An Elegant Red Hat workshop given by Linda Cantrell. My appliqued lady looked almost magical because her dress was of a cotton popular during this time. The book is broken into sections that reflect historical changes in textiles in the United States.(Pre-1830,1830-1860, 1860-1880,1880-1810, 1910-1935, 1930-1960. Color plate swatches are arranged by color and color examples are given of fabrics in faded colors as well. This is a boon to history buffs in documenting quilts with faded fabrics. I love redwork and have found the red examples in both the 1880-1910 and the 1910-1935 section to be helpful in selecting period appropriate reds. The 1830-1860 and the 1860-1880's swatches have helped me identify fabrics to use for Civil War reenactment. Truly a great resource for anyone interested in reproducing or identifying historical quilts.

This book is the one we've all been waiting for. It has literally the most definitive collection of clear, full color fabric swatch pictures of fabrics dating from 1800 to 1960 that has EVER been compiled and published in one easy to use spiral, hardbound book. Her explanations are cursory, but the pictures make this book my most often referred to book when dating old fabric and/or vintage quilts with their multitudes of different fabrics.

One neat thing about this book is that it lays open flat so you don't have to juggle with it to keep your place in the book while examining and comparing with your actual quilt or fabric. It has a great, and I mean GREAT, resource list with web site addresses including quilt societies, appraisers and museums, a full glossary of what all those "trade insider" words mean, and a very comprehensive bibliography.

I can't imagine how I got by without this book. It is the visual bible of quilt/fabric dating and identification. It deserves more than 5 starts, it is a gorgeous, useful, well documented and very organized fabric dating reference manual!

There is nothing like being able to hold a scrap of old fabric in your hand; to feel it, see the texture and imagine what the world was like when it was made. To learn about the history of fabrics this way would be ideal, but for most of us handling vintage fabric is a rare treat. There are many books out with beautiful color prints of quilts from various eras but until now we couldn't examine an extensive collection of fabrics. "Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide 1800-1960" offers this opportunity by organizing hundreds of fabric swatches by period. For each period Eileen Trestain gives us fascinating information about how textiles were made, dyes were used and prints created in the making of fabrics during that time period. She goes on to explain about the dyes available and how various colors were made. Most intriguing of all is her description of how prints were created and what kinds were popular. She then tells us about the quilt styles of the period. With this background information we are able to notice so much more detail in the pictured fabrics. Through studying this book you will develop a good sense of what the fabrics were like in a given period and how they were made, dyed and printed.

Eileen Trestain has filled a void for those who are interested in dating antique quilts and fabrics. Fabrics from 1800 through the 1960s are documented and shown in full color in this easy to use spiral bound reference,which includes excellent commentary on specific quilting periods and styles and a comprehensive bibliography. A must for anyone interested in antique quilts, it is bound to become a favorite for quilt historians and quilt lovers alike!

This book is so excellent. The author thought out the book really well, like having a hardcover/spiral bound book so it's durable and can stay open flat. The colors are great, and all of the prints are reproduced in their *actual size* -- what you see is what it actually looks like! You can hold fabrics right up to the book and compare. The text is informative and fun to read; you'll learn a lot about textile production, color trends, and the evolution of cotton fabric.

The book is divided into sections based on date and then subdivided by color. It's so much fun to look at the pictures! I feel like a little girl again, looking through my mom's neat boxes of old quilt scraps. This book is a must-have for anyone interested in old quilts or historic clothing.

Wow! What a fascinating education in fabrics and our history, the book is arranged in historical periods, each focusing on all things fabric: the why's and whens of dyes inventions and processes, evolution of taste in color and design, and particulars peculiar to quilting such as popular design styles of each period. This said, I'd buy the book just for the hundreds of photos of quilt swatches. Yum!

I love repro fabrics for quilting but wanted to learn more about them. This is a particularly well done book, with good color and real-life sizing of the prints. Each period section begins with a few pages that covers what was happening in the period, what fabrics were popular, what quilt blocks and quilting patterns were popular, etc. There's also a bit on how the fabric was manufactured in that period. Fabrics before 1830 took an enormous amount of work and were basically done laboriously with hand-coloring and wood blocks -- very labor intensive process to produce prints. The prints they produced remind me (not surprisingly since India was the source of much of the cotton fabric then) of the gauzy prints from India that you still see today. There's a discussion of popular colors and dyes, and the fabrics are organized by color within each period section. Now I know what Turkey red is -- including where the dye came from, when it appeared, etc.

This is a wonderful book, but then, I love vintage fabrics.

I purchased this book mostly to help date vintage fabrics from the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. I love the spiral binding. The swatch examples are awesome. The notes on color and styles are helpful. I do feel, however, that lumping 1930 through 1960 photos together with no notes does not really help to date the fabric accurately enough.

This book would be of interest to quilters and those interested in dating quilts. The patterns are listed in colour headings under 20 to 30 year groupings eg 1880-1910 and there are several pages in front of each year grouping with details including the period, textile colours, fabric print styles and quilt styles. The pictures are in colour and the book spiral bound so it will lie flat easily when open - good for making comparisons of quilt material.