Morris Quilts

Evening Star by Sheila

William Meets the Farmer's Wife

By Sheila Oaten

Sheila (The Quilting Gammy)  made blocks from the Farmer's Wife sampler in William Morris reproduction prints.

The patterns are from a book by Laurie Aaron Hird

See Sheila's Flickr page here with lots more pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55642760@N07/6802228808/in/photostream

Barbara Brackman, Craftsman Values, 2011

I found this quilt I made last year in the stack of unphotographed miniquilts. I used a package of 1-1/2" precuts, sorted them out by value into lights and darks and made a strip quilt by piecing strips along the diagonal.

The ever creative women at Common Threads in Waxahachie, Texas have kitted up the Southern Gentleman pattern by Sindy Rodenmayer in Morris & Company prints.

See more at the shop by clicking here:

http://www.commonthreadsquilting.com/index.php/component/content/article/396

Penny Pierce is teaching a class in embroidery. For her sampler she used 1 metre of the Daffodil print from my Morris Tapestry collection. She said it's a good thing she's Canadian so she got a metre instead of a yard, because she couldn't have gotten all the sashing and the border out of a yard.

I don't think I ever posted a picture of Roseanne Smith's "square in a square" quilt finished.

Here it is hanging down at Sarah's Fabrics.

She framed square in a square blocks with strips and cornerstones and then added wider strips and cornerstones.

Her inspiration was this quilt from about 1900 she saw on an online auction.

Send me pictures of stuff you make from these Morris prints and I'll post them here and on my Pinterest board.

http://pinterest.com/materialculture/quilt-william-morris/

Update on March 25th---See Shasha's quilt here

http://kidderdragon.blogspot.com/2012/02/quilt-top-done.html

Corinth for 1862 Battle Hymn

Corinth is named for Corinth, Mississippi, site of an 1862 battle.

 The print is #8222 in my latest Civil War reproduction collection, 1862 Battle Hymn.

Doesn't it look like a cotton boll?

Here's the document print.

 I found it in a swatch book in the Moda library. It's got to be later than the Civil War because of that wine-red background, a color you really don't see until the 1880s, but this is a very symbolic fabric collection so I thought we could use it.

It reminded me of these white on dark prints

that were quite popular right before the Civil War.

Top from about 1850 (the center square is a reproduction print)

You could classify them as floral trails. They often have white stems. 

Two Civil War-era floral trail reproductions.

 We tone down the white in the reproductions.

So we have it in Farragut blue (a navy blue)

and Stonewall Gray - a taupe

From the Library of Congress collection

Corinth, "the Crossroads of the Confederacy," was at the junction of two important rail lines, an important location over which the armies fought for years.

Corinth from the Library of Congress

The Tishomingo Hotel shown here near the tracks became a hospital. Click here to read Confederate nurse Kate Cumming's recollection of her first day as a nurse in that building. 

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/10/42-h-is-for-hospital.html 

The Union took control of the town in the 1862 battle and Corinth became a refuge for many escaped slaves.

The Corinth Contraband Camp memorializes those newly free people.

This pattern Railroad Crossing or Rambler is a good one for an authentic reproduction quilt. Click here for a free pattern:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/05/rambler-from-civil-war-reunion.html

Here's Roseanne Smith's reproduction using my Civil War Reunion line. This collection is more subdued. Adding a white or ivory contrast would be effective and authentic.

Another option: The Cotton Boll block. See a pattern for an 8" square block here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/02/8-cotton-boll.html

Every Civil War Reproduction Line Needs a Neat Stripe

Narrow stripes, known as neats in the fabric industry,

were a fashion necessity after 1860 or so.

Like this madder-style stripe in my newest Civil War reproduction collection for Moda.

1862 Battle Hymn is in shops in the precuts including Fat Quarter Packs.

This particular stripe comes in five colorways

I named the prints after Civil War battles from 150 years ago.

The neat stripe is called Cedar Mountain.

This colorway with it's madder reds and dulled oranges is named Culpepper Peach.

The navy blue at left is Farragut Blue and the lighter, steel blue Merrimack Blue.

There are two neutral (what we might called taupe) colorways---on the left Stonewall Gray and in front Sharpsburg Tan.

The blues and the neutrals are rather subdued, evocative of the national mood in 1862 when everyone began to realize that the War would be a long and horrible conflict.

Roseanne Smith has some 2-1/2" Jellyroll strips and some 10" Layer Cakes. She's been busy with the neat stripe in the peach colorway.

She loves to miter

I could see a whole quilt out of scrappy nine-patches with mitered frames.

I'll post more about the prints, colors and themes in 1862 Battle Hymn. The yardage should be out any day.

Read more about stripes in the mid-19th-century at this post of mine a few years ago:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/01/stripes-in-civil-war-homefront.html

Tree of Life Reproduction

Tree of Life

By Roseanne Smith

Roseanne Smith has been working on her appliqued center in the tree-of-life design for a new medallion. She's using my Lately Arrived From London reproductions from Moda. Here's how she did this. It's cut-out chintz or Broderie Perse.

I exaggerated the contrast here so you could see that she has appliqued the Seaflower print to a very similar plain-colored background.

The reverse

But she did not cut out every flower and leaf in the traditional fashion. You can see on the back here that she appliqued a large chunk of chintz to the plain colored background. She's cut out the backing so she doesn't have to applique through so many layers.

She cut a shape out of the plum-colored Seaflower print...

My mock-up gives you a rough idea.

...And appliqued that to the background. Then she added other flowers and leaves for more complicated foliage, making the tree more detailed. She added the traditional hillock (a range of small hills).

Brilliant I say!

Roseanne found a very close solid color on the shelf at her quilt shop. One source for solids is Moda's Basic line of Bella Solids

Click here to see the selection:

http://www.unitednotions.com/fcc_bella-solids.pdf

They are all numbered 9900. Shades 9900.18 or 9900.45 (over on the left on the color card here) look like they are close in color. Ask your shop owner if she has this color card any time you are looking for a match.

For more on Broderie Perse see December's War of 1812 posts, where it will be the featured technique for the month.

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/