QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Winnetka: Richmond Reds

Winnetka is #8305 
The picture of Winnetka, Illinois, is from the Winnetka Historical Society.

The basket weave print in my new Moda collection Richmond Reds is reproduced from a scrap of cotton printed in periwinkle blue on white. Because this collection leans towards the warmer side of the color wheel we colored it in eight different shades of madder style reds, brown plus an olive.

The document print


Pages of "Basketweave & Latticework" from 
Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and 
American Patterns for Printed Fabrics 
by Susan Meller and Joost Elffers

In their index to print style, Meller & Elffers classify basketweaves with latticework.

The idea of a textural illusion has long been an important part of printing fabric.

Lane's Net is a popular print with a texture that dates back to the early-19th century.

Roller printing's detail allowed print designers to go all-out in creating a 3-D image.

Basketweaves continue to be popular with designers and customers. The print style is less of a clue to date than the color. The green print above is a mid-20th-century feedsack.

The blue-violet in my document print is a good clue
to 1870-1890, but the print is such a classic, especially in madder-style reds and browns,
that you could use it in any 19th-century period quilt.


Why Winnetka? For this line and the next I picked names of American towns
with a nice lilt. There's a Winnetka, California but I was thinking of Illinois.




As was the Bob Crosby band. Listen to the jazz song "Big Noise from Winnetka," written in 1938 by Bob Haggart and Ray Baudac.  They must have liked the sound of the word too. Click here for a YouTube video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzwoc7UWdBw

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post on your naming of new fabric line. I taught in the town next door - Wilmette. It doesn't have the same lilt.

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  2. Wonderful new line and it reminds me of the pentangles I have been playing with. I do it to relax and get my creativity going again.

    Debbie

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  3. Well Donna, I grew up in Wilmette and my brother lives in Winnetka, so this post may be the closest to home of any blog post yet. Oh, and the fabric looks grand!

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  4. I am longing for this new fabric line!

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  5. Good morning Barbara,
    The Iowa/Illinois Quilt Study Group are asking permission to use your
    Thursday, January 28, 2010
    Kansas City Star Patterns Online
    in our magazine "Pieces of Time."

    Thank you.
    Catherine Litwinow
    litwinow622msn.com

    ReplyDelete