Twelve Quilts of Christmas – #2

Susan McCord made this outstanding example of the popular mid-19^th century red and green floral quilts with a large flower and urn motifs. This particular design is known as the Harrison Rose after William Henry Harrison who was Indiana’s first territorial governor and ninth U.S. President.  It is not hard to imagine that McCord’s wonderful flower gardens served as inspiration for her for this quilt.  

When I was looking at this quilt as I was writing this post, I was staggered to see the meticulous care McCord had gone to, to assure exacting replication of the placement of elements within each of the urn blocks.  What at first seems like near perfection, when examined more closely indeed reveals the traces of a human hand at work, with all sorts of interesting tidbits and twists that come to light.  Those anomalies are the design moments that I think make this quilt engaging.  Each urn block is not a carbon copy, but I am left wondering how she achieved such astounding replication of placement in each them.  Look and you will find perhaps a difference in spacing equalling fractions of an inch, but for the most part the elements are in precisely the same location within each block, with each of the elements gesturing the same way as their neighbouring blocks … a jaunty little tilt to the left for one leaf … cascading blossoms that lean ever so slightly, but oh so symmetrically towards the ground.

Some differences in colour can be noted: the flipping of the placement for the red and green elements in a pair of flowers in one block; the substitution of a pink for a red in blossoms here and there; not enough to distract, but just enough to delight.  I noticed there are subtle shade differences in the green of the urns … sun fading, unstable dyes, or different bolts of fabric?  

Some of my other favourite moments in the quilt?

The borders that each highlight a different flower.  One of the borders has a blossom that mirrors a flower found in the bouquets, but McCord changed the style of leaves for that border blossom.  The other flower from the bouquets that is used in a border changes up the design of it’s centre.  Notice how she didn’t mind using the same leaf shape on adjacent borders, and how she switched it up with a different leaf shape on the borders opposite those. 

That her borders are different widths top to bottom and yet the same on the sides, what’s up with that … fabric she had on hand and wasn’t going to chop off and waste good fabric just to have all the borders the same width?  A design choice for the type of flowers being used on each?  Trying to get to an exact measurement for the bed it was to go on?

Those very vibrant orange dots on the urns.  I swoon for dots!  Those smaller dots that are situated right above the blossoms on the left … embroidered?  Appliqued?  Their diminutive size makes them double swoon worthy!

And finally, that fine binding that forms the most delicate frame around the entire composition.  We know from the facts below that it measures less than ½”.  Narrow single fold binding for the win … always … regardless if it is cut on the straight of grain or cut on the bias!  I love Narrow Single Fold Binding cut on the straight of grain and have been using it for the past 20 years.  You can find a tutorial sheet about Narrow Single Fold Bindings here on my blog.

Some other facts about this quilt:

Condition:  Good/moderate use

Construction: Hand pieced, hand appliqued, hand embroidered

Borders: Top border 8.25 inches. Bottom border 8 inches. Side borders 6 inches.

Back: Solid/plain white cotton back, hand sewn, four pieces 30.5 in; 31in; 4in; 10in 

Batting:  Thin cotton batting, some milling debris visible.

Quilting: Hand quilted with white cotton thread at 10 – 12 stitches per inch, some quilting at 6 stitches per inches in brown thread; Urns are quilted with diamonds. The motifs are outline and self-quilted on a ground of diamonds. The borders are also outline quilted with additional quilted leaves. Blanket stitch is used to outline one type of flower

Binding:  Separate binding was applied on the bias grain, handsewn with cording, measuring less than ½”

What other things have you noticed about this quilt?  I would love to hear your thoughts!