Twelve Quilts of Christmas 2019 – #4
Square Within A Square, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, c. 1895, Maker Unknown. Indicated as from the Esprit Collection
I look at this quilt and sigh with delight.
The simple pieced design is such a wonderful canvas for the exquisite quilting designs. The concentric circles of feathers in the centre draw you into the quilt and spin your eye around. The edges of the diamond grid in the corners of the central medallion are softened with a gentle scallop design. That delightful scallop continues on, running along the inner edge of the narrow border between each of the diamond grid sections of quilting. Such wonderful attention to detail. And the un-quilted areas between the diamond grid and the centre circles are import as negative space providing a smooth transition between the two sets of motifs. As well, it helps introduce and in fact emphasize the octagon shape that is created. The geometric nature of the quilting design in the narrow border is nicely balanced by the four leaves in the centre of each wee “square on point”. As for the outer border, the wonderful swirling and undulating feathers entice our eyes to wind our way around the quilt again and again. (Sigh!) They’re wonderful!
I adore the gold with the purple. That teal narrow border is just the right colour and pops visually. (Another wonderful sigh of delight). The icing on the cake? That binding … it is a brighter blue than the teal, but at first glance you don’t notice that they are not the same. If they had been the same, I think it would have been boring. And I might not have thought that it would work having the centre and narrow border colours so close in value, so close that they almost disappear into one another when you squint at it, but it does. There’s just enough difference. Perfection. Absolute glowing perfection.
Would you have ever considered this colour combination? What do you think of it.
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Just stunning! Beautiful on every level.
So true! It is so simple and could be considered not worthy of much attention, but when I look at it, I just can’t take my eyes off it.
Wow!!!!!
Yup! Wow!!!!! is exactly it! Thank you for stopping by Nancy.
I love the gold and of course it goes so well with purple, but personally I find purple such a cold color. It is still a beauty!
I always find it so interesting how people perceive colour differently. That is why all of our quilts that we make have our “colour finger prints” all over them!
I love this regal color combination, and agree with you about the blues. The quilting is so far beyond anything I would ever attempt (skill and time) that I find it a story of its own. Would one person have stitched in the evening by candlelight, or would the neighbors have come to help by day? It seems this design is black-belt level. The ladies would have sent me to the barn to milk.
I love your comment! “black-belt level” quilting. Oh it sure is.
It is beautiful but somewhere on it must be a flaw for in the Amish beliefs only God was perfection as a humble follower the maker must have something slightly off to show her devotion.
Take a look at the corners of the inner border … Remember Sesame Street? “One of these things is not like the other.”
This quite a modern style quilt.
Makes us perhaps really have to contemplate and examine what the meaning of “modern” really is.