Carrie A. Hall (1866-1955) was a Leavenworth, Kansas-based seamstress, quilt pattern collector, and author of the book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America. In the book she describes setting out in the 1920s and 1930s to make a block of every quilt pattern she could find. Her sources included magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star, which printed patterns at that time. In 1938 Hall donated 1,057 quilt blocks, envelopes of hand-drawn patterns, various quilting books, patterns, and pamphlets to The Spooner-Thayer Museum at the University of Kansas.

Elizabeth Szabronski (1908-1999) lived in Levittown, New York and had a collection of quilt patterns from books, magazines, and newspapers. She created a cross-referenced index of all the patterns in her collection, including their various monikers. She subscribed to various quilt pattern publications such as Little N’ Big, Aunt Kate’s Quilting Bee, and Hobbies Crafts and Quilt News. Other sources for patterns included the Stearns and Foster Company, the Old Chelsea Station Needlecraft Service, and various women’s magazines. She noted these publications on her pattern index cards.

When Szabronski retired to Gulfport, Florida in 1974, she donated her quilt block research collection, including books, pamphlets, newspapers and her index to the Spooner-Thayer Museum because, she wrote, “I knew Carrie Hall’s blocks were there and somehow I felt they should be together.”

In 1978 the University of Kansas moved its entire art collection, including the Hall/Szabronski quilt collection, to the newly built Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art. Elizabeth Szabronski’s index cards and Carrie Hall’s hand-drawn patterns were transferred to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library in 2022 to make them more accessible to the public. Most of Hall’s patterns in this collection correspond to her quilt blocks in the Helen Spencer Museum of Art collection.

[Information retrieved from Barbara Brackman’s article, “The Hall/Szabronski Collection at the University of Kansas” in Uncoverings, 1982 and from the Spencer Research Library accession file.]