Civil War Jubilee: A Shadowy Sprig

The document fabric for this reproduction print in my summer collection Civil War Jubilee

is from an old sawtooth star full of madder-style reds and browns, a few stripes and paisleys,

The center square was pieced together from scraps. The quilter didn't have enough

to make the square, or perhaps she cut this piece from a worn dress and just cut across the seam.

I love the shadowy nature of the floral with a crosshatched background.

Civil War Jubilee is a dark line and this is the darkest print in it.

The purplish prints would have been appropriate for clothing if one were in half mourning---

Queen Victoria wore half mourning

for four decades after her husband died.

Etiquette demanded a widow go into full mourning, wearing black for a year and then half-mourning in which she might wear dark colors and prints for another year.

Half mourning dresses

from Godey's in 1848

See a page about Victorian mourning dress at Michigan State University's site:

https://www.msu.edu/user/beltranm/mourning/mourning.htm

A Gibson Girl, a merry widow in half-mourning, 

by Charles Dana Gibson

And one more thing about this print: We dyed the background a dark color and then printed over it with an even darker color, so the back of the fabric can be used as a dark solid---

Two for one!