Twelve Quilts of Christmas – #11

From the museum’s description of this quilt:

“Prince’s Feather, often called Princess Feather, was a popular mid-19th century appliqued quilt design. McCord’s graceful version of this feathery pinwheel pattern features her distinctive striped leaves, expertly pieced from tiny colorful scraps of fabric.”

McCord’s mastery! Her ability to create a bold graphic that at the same time feels weightless and ethereal. It is a delight! Her ability to reimagine a traditional design in such a unique fashion. Simply exquisite.

And by now you well know how I feel about Susan McCord’s string leaves. And she has worked her magic with them once again.

I’m taking a pause to catch my breath.  You can too.  Is your heart beating just a bit faster looking at this quilt?

She has used a very tight colour palette for this quilt. The poison green stands out as it creates the spine of each feather and the tips of some leaves where they join the spine.  For the string pieced leaves McCord used various shades of red, pink, purple and chambray blue. The long skinny leaves that for the most part rhythmically punctuate the design between string pieced leaves, and they are one piece of fabric, not string pieced, and they are predominantly red or pink. 

Where the feathers look a little sparser, like leaves are missing, McCord did not leave those leaves off, they are indeed there. They are visually missing because the fabric was dyed with an unstable synthetic dye that has faded out over time to the palest of cream which is blending into the background. At the beginning of the production of synthetic dyes, many colours were unstable, such as purple, green, reds and some blues, and they all faded to various shades of tan through cream.  You can see some purple prints in the quilt that are fading to tan.  My guess is that those faded leaves were also red or pink. The “four point star” in the middle of each feather star has also faded to the same pale cream and was perhaps red or pink.  These leaves and stars I think were solid colour fabrics as no remnants of print pattern is discernible from looking at the photograph. 

I have to wonder if the border has done the same thing and faded due to fugitive dyes.  I am pondering this while only looking at a photograph not the quilt itself, so it’s a curiosity question, but it does seem to be a similar shade to the centre stars.  What would you think if the quilt had a pink or red border?  Would you like it as much?  Can you imagine it with red or pink stars in the middle of each feather block?

Will you dream of this quilt tonight?

Some other facts about this quilt:

Condition: Fair/worn

Construction: Hand pieced, hand appliqued 

Borders: Top and bottom borders 1 inch. Side borders 1.25 inches.

Back: Cotton muslin, plain/solid, handsewn, 3 pieces (34.5 in; 34 in; 6 in)

Batting: Thin cotton batting

Quilting: hand quilted, white thread, 11 stitches per inch; appliqued leaves and buds are single outline quilted against a background of diamond crosshatch

Binding: Edges turned in, no separate binding