(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
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This sketch was drawn by Margaret Whiting (1860-1946), co-founder of the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework. Society members both created original designs and adapted 18th and 19th century patterns. In this sketch, they adapted a new design from a wool embroidered linen head cloth completed in 1765 by Rebekah Dickinson (1738-1815), a Hatfield, Massachusetts, gown maker. More than a century after Dickinson created the bed hangings from which this sketch is based, Deerfield Society founders Ellen Miller and Margaret Whiting (1854-1929) revived and reinterpreted her designs in ways that they thought would most appeal to turn of the 20th century customers interested in the products of a thriving arts and crafts movement. The "D" in a flax wheel at the lower right corner and at the center of the design was the Society's trademark.