On this day in 1863, Winifred Sweet Black Bonfils, an American journalist and reporter, was born in Chilton, Wisconsin. She famously staged a fainting on the street in San Francisco to test the city’s emergency response. Ambulance services proved to be wanting and this caused a major scandal. She dressed as a boy and was the first reporter on the line to cover the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and in 1906, she covered the San Francisco earthquake. At her death in 1936, her body lay in state at the San Francisco city hall.

Violet Christopherson of Marinette, Wisconsin, made this String quilt using parts of her mother’s and father’s wedding clothes as well as other family members’ garments. The owner inherited the quilt from his mother, Violet’s sister, and documented the quilt during the Wisconsin Quilt History Project.  Violet’s family was one of the few who survived the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin in 1871. Her grandmother, the family matriarch, knew a great fire was coming and she had the children go through a firedrill every day. Read how they were able to survive this historic fire, which killed between 1,500-2,500 people, in this Quilt Index record.

View this quilt on The Quilt Index to find out! Read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Bonfils
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire


Quilt Index partners

Amy Milne headshot

Posted by Amy E. Milne
Executive Director, Quilt Alliance
amy.milne@quiltalliance.org

See You in June for Month Three!

Thank you so much to everyone who has participated in the Quilt Alliance’s Birthday Block of the Month so far! We’ve made two very different but complementary blocks together and we can’t wait to make more. Join us next month as we make a block designed by Pat Sloan — we’ll send instructions out on the 15th.

Be sure to tag @quiltalliance and @zakfoster.quilts on Instagram with your block photos this month, and use the hashtag #QuiltAllianceBOM (or email us a photo of your block at blockparty@quiltalliance.org). And leave any questions about this month’s block in the comments below!

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