I hope everyone has been able to find little snippets of time to work on Block 15 of our Beyond The Cherry Trees quilt. Every month I continue to be amazed by the quilt and all it’s hidden treasures.
While I was in Shipshewana last month for the Dear Jane Retreat I was honored to have Fiona, one of my Jane friends, spend some time with me looking over the quilt and sharing her observations. Bless your heart Fiona, you have more knowledge about applique quilts, Baltimore Album quilts in particular, in your little finger than I’ll ever have in a lifetime.
Fiona lives in England but has traveled far and wide to study antique quilts. We both felt the layers in this flower were originally white or a creamy white like the background and red.
In this picture you can see little specks of brown that remain in the block. They are identical to the little tufts of brown we earlier found to be purple in the center block filled with grapes. We haven’t done that one yet.
It’s interesting the way the yellow and purple fabrics were alternated as the bottom layer in some of these flowers and as the top layer in others.
Here we have red buds appliqued on a red vase. Because the vase fabric is so deteriorated one has to wonder if it was a deeper shade of red because most of us wouldn’t applique the same red on red.
If you look closely you can see the shape of a flower where the fabric is completely gone. I stitched around it so I could trace the shape.
Here’s another little flower bud where the fabric is still strong and sturdy but there isn’t a bit of color left in it. Fiona has seen fabrics in Baltimore Album quilts where the dye in certain shades of pink and blue fabric has faded away to white. Eureka!! The more we looked at the quilt, the more we could see where those colors were likely used.
Fiona shared with me two pieces of fabric showing the shade of blue we believe may have been used in the quilt. If I had to describe them I’d say a soft sky blue and a robin’s egg blue.
Here’s an example of a double pink. This one is from Blue Hill Fabric’s Little Pink Stars collection by Margo Krager. I think the ‘no color’ flowers in Block 15 were pink. A blue fabric was more likely used in other blocks and I’ll let you know when we get to those.
There was no shortage of hidden stitches in the quilting. I think our quilter liked this block as much as I do. I almost missed the little flower tucked between the top of the vase and flower stem.
Some of you have noticed the Members Only area of the site has opened up and have signed up to be Sentimental Stitchers. In order to begin our testing we had to ‘go live’ as they say. The functions and pages seems to be working better than I am. I have hundreds of images and files to upload for the Sentimental Stitchers to access. I never imagined what an undertaking it would be to change the design of the site and move my studio from one end of the lower level to the other. Maybe it was turning the center room into a walk-in fabric room, maybe it was my Mom falling out of bed and breaking a bone in her face, maybe it’s the holidays or maybe I’m just not moving as fast as my brain is. Tomorrow I promise to share more details, tell you about the Members Only 2011 Block of the Month quilts and more. My Petticoats & Polka Dots fabric collection is in the house and I have some Give Aways for the week between Christmas and New Years but today was Cherry Tree day.
