Grandmother's Choice
For the first block in our sampler to recall the fight for women's rights Becky Brown used "Michaelmas Daisy" from the Morris Apprentice collection for the corner squares.
It's the small print in the Morris Apprentice Collection from Moda, named for a small flower.
In the States we call these asters and consider them an important part of a fall garden. In England they are also fall bloomers, appearing about the time of Saint Michael's feastday on September 29th. Michaelmas is a milepost in the traditional British calendar.
The print comes in ten colorways and will be a great addition to your Morris stash, useful as a foil to all those grander large-scale prints.
The print is classic Henry Dearle, the floral ground covers he used in his tapestries and stained glass windows translated to a small-scale detail. Like its floral namesake, the print makes up in numbers for its tiny size.
Dearle Tapestry from about 1909.
Michaelmas daisies are sometimes seen in the details.
Sketch for a stained glass window.
Drawings for tapestries and windows were called cartoons.
"Eden", on the other hand, is a splashy large print.
Dearle alternated two images---
one with a ring of rose hips or pomegranates...
the other with a ring of daffodil-like florals.
Here's a preview of a future Grandmother's Choice block
by Becky with Eden fussy cut for the center.
I imagine Dearle called it "Eden" because of the eastern influence. One big change at Morris & Company design after the former apprentice took over artistic direction was the introduction of formal repeats derived from Islamic art,
This Morris & Company carpet design shows the
same flat repeat based on curved lines.
"Eden" was designed about 1905. In this early-20th-century catalog of printed fabrics it was offered for 3/10 per yard (36" wide) in one colorway, pink and green on white.
See a piece of the original print at the Victoria and Albert Museum by clicking here:
Beautiful prints and i need to think about fussy cutting with some of my prints. I like how they look as a center block or if i have enough, part of the surrounding squares. Another good thing to think about when I make a new quilt.
ReplyDeleteDebbie