Here is another "stamped" quilt. These designs were marked on the quilt top in blue pencil by professional quilt designers, usually in Allendale. Then the buyer could either give to to a local quilter, or quilt it herself. Church groups often sent off for these, too. You could buy them ready made, or send your own fabric to be marked. FitzRandolph surmises that most quilters lost the ability to mark the more complex designs as a result.
The colours of this quilt do not show very well in the photos. The colour is actually a pea green! Green and Gold were considered to be a popular combination.
The centre has flat iron designs with ferns and roses, and the corners echo this. Here, there is a feather creation with the longer feathers outermost....not seen this before. The swag border has little trefoil uprights. The designs were marked on large tables, so the background infill is always nicely done, unlike many other wholecloths where the grid is often decidedly wonky.
You can see that, as is common in dark coloured quilts, there are fade marks where the folded quilt was exposed to sunlight in storage.
The reverse of the quilt is gold colour. Unusually, the quilting has been partly done in green thread, partly in gold thread...one would usually expect the thread to match the right side, green in this case.
The machine edging has been more neatly done than most. You can see remnants of the blue pencil marking on the green side.
More blue pencil in this photo...a very elegant quilt in good condition.
What a nice quilt. Lovely quilting. Pea green and gold aren't colors I would normally put together but in times to come people will wonder why I chose the color combinations I did.
ReplyDeleteStunning designs & such a lot of quilting. Funny that you should mention Allendale...I live in Melbourne, Australia and just recently my husband & I had a weekend away in the Goldfield area of Victoria.
ReplyDeleteOver the last few years my husband has been following up his family history and one of the areas we visited was Allendale, where a great uncle use to live before he went to WW1. Sadly he died on the battlefields of France.