Seminole Patchwork

Occasionally,  I get requests to mend things other than quilts.  This is Seminole patchwork, a technique developed among the Seminole peoples in Florida.  Traditionally and continuing today, these patchwork strips are used to make clothing.  This wall hanging was likely made for sale to tourists.  I think the colors of the fabrics date it to the 1940s.  It measures 51" x 64".

The current owner of the piece found it in a chest while clearing out his mother's estate.  He is assuming it originally belonged to his grandmother, as she lived in Florida at one time.  He says of his grandmother:

She was very interested in beautiful fabrics and had a small factory there where they made tie - died and batiked fabrics and sold them to department stores in New York City.

The technique entails stitching long strips of various colors, then cutting across them into vertical sections, and stitching those together in various combinations and orientations.  They are stitched by machine.  There is a wide range of patterns that result.

There was one larger tear in a solid yellow strip and several smaller places in the patchwork with either tiny tears or spots where the fabric had pulled out of the seams.  

 

I mended the longer tear, about 2" long, by cutting an underlay fabric, slipping it inside the tear, and stitching the tear shut with a couching stitch.  

I chose this method because it would be less visible than a patch.  The underlay gives the stitches some, new strong fabric to grab onto instead of pulling on just the older fabric.

I stitched the smaller openings shut, mostly with the herringbone stitch.

As an aside:

Here are a couple of photos to illustrate how different lighting affects the results of photographs.  These two photos are of the very same fabrics, one taken in daylight and one in lamplight.  Incandescent lights are known for giving a yellow cast, but my lamp has a bulb that is sold as one that is closest to daylight in color.  Hmmmm.  I've noticed that this kind of wide discrepancy happens most noticeably with yellow/tan/beige.  And lately, I've read that our cameras are often calibrated to adjust colors to produce good skin tones.  So what may be happening is the camera's confusion about what is a skin color that we see in photos like these.  Notice that the navy at bottom left and the narrow red stripe on the right hardly change at all.