Ely & Walker Fabric Samples

As a quilter and quilt collector I am naturally drawn to fabrics. New or old, I love fabrics. One of the best ways to learn about fabrics is to study books on fabrics (and quilts) and study fabrics in fabric sample books. Over the years I have come across some great fabric sample books, the following date to the 1930's era.

Two fabric sample books from 1936 and 1937.

Ely and Walker was a large fabric manufacturer from St. Louis during the 1900's. The two large fabric sample books pictured above contain hundreds of fabric samples from the 1930's.
One of their fabric lines, Quadriga Cloth, was one of their most popular dress weight cottons of the period. "Needleized" refers to the manufacturing process of piercing the fabric with needles which improves the texture or "hand".

A wide variety of solids in pastels and cheerful colors.

Cute prints that we might find in 1930's quilts.

Small prints in many colors.

There are also prints that we wouldn't expect to find in 1930's quilts. One of their lines was the Quaker Chintz Prints. These were similar to fabrics from the 1800's, like the double pinks, and the yellow fabrics with small floral designs.

Also fabrics in greys, blacks, navy, and darker jewel toned prints. Prints like this can throw off our quilt dating if we are not aware that they were still available in the 1930's - 40's.

Quaker Chintz Prints in double pinks and yellow.

Blacks and greys similar to mourning prints, not what we would expect to find in 1930's quilts.

There were many other prints from this period that we may not recognize as 30's prints.

Colorful jewel toned floral prints.

Bold bright larger scaled prints.

Beautiful delicate floral dress prints.