Grandmother's Dream quilt, Anna Marie Espenlaub

Exhibition Label:
"Quilts: A Thread of Modernism," Aug-2005, Debra Thimmesch and Barbara Brackman
Anna Marie Sauer was born in Germany and came to the United States as a child. After her marriage, she admired her mother-in-law’s quilts, but when encouraged to make one she protested she was not yet an old lady, a reflection of the popular attitude towards quilting in the teens and early twenties. She must have noticed that other women of her age where taking up the hobby, because she learned while she was in her forties and made this accomplished quilt for daughter Dorothy.
The pattern is a classic appliqué design, based on two motifs important in German folk arts. The bud-or is it a fruit?-is sometimes called “Pomegranate” or “Love Apple,” an ancient symbol of fertility. The central design, a common eight-lobed floral, is often referred to as a rose. Nineteenth-century versions typically were stitched in traditional Pennsylvania-German colors of red and green, rather than the shades of clear blue on a tan background, the stylish palette that Anna Espenlaub used.

The Espenlaub family called the design “Grandmother’s Dream,” a variation of the name “Ladies’ Dream,” under which El Dorado, Kansas, entrepreneur Scioto Imhoff Danner sold the pattern. Many Midwestern women like Danner supported themselves well through the Depression by selling patterns for traditional designs, updated with new color palettes, quilting patterns and fancy edges. Anna Espenlaub probably purchased the pattern but interpreted it in her own fashion. Quilters will note her unusual techniques: pieced buds and an appliquéd strip border.

Scioto Imhoff Danner, author
Publisher unknown
United States
Mrs. Danner’s Third Quilt Book, 1930s
Loan courtesy of Barbara Brackman

Scioto Imhof Danner ran a prosperous quilt pattern business in the 1930s, selling patterns for traditional quilts. She made personal appearances at department stores and published catalogs like this one featuring her pattern “The Ladies’ Dream.”