Twelve Quilts of Christmas – #3

The museum writes: “This popular patchwork pattern is called Diamond Field. In Susan McCord’s hands it becomes a marvel of workmanship and design — tiny pieces of different fabrics expertly arranged and sewn together. The quilt top is evenly faded and the batting thin — it has seen much use and washing. Perhaps the quiltmaker or a family member slept under this quilt

Unfortunately some of the reference photos for the McCord quilts were taken many years ago and so are a lesser resolution than we might get today.  This makes a deeper study, like fabrics used, a bit more challenging.  However we can still focus on colour and value. I can see that she was working to create “rows” of colour in her composition, but sprinkled substitutions throughout and that there is some gradation happening with her “rows”.   

I can also discern that she used a broad range of “reds” in the “sashing” hexagon pieces, from a medium pink through to a darker burgundy. She arranged the colour of the sashing also in rows, starting with a lighter pink on the bottom and moving to darker reds on the top, finishing off with the medium pink again, but she made lots of substitutions where she needed to. Mc Cord also added on darker streak on the right-hand side of “sashing” hexagons. 

Note that the centres of each of the “diamonds” all seem to be on the light to medium side in terms of value, and that they are rather randomly distributed … no attempts at creating the same “rows” with them.

What I love about this quilt is how she used her keen eye and sense of design in combining all the different colour values and substitutions into a beautiful assymetrically balanced quilt. The result is that this rather simple block design has been transformed into a visually engaging composition full of surprises!

Does this quilt tempt you to make some hexagon diamonds? What do you think of her composition?

Some other facts about this quilt:

Condition Good/Moderate Use

Hand pieced 

Borders: 1.25 inches on all sides.

Backing: Solid/plain cream cotton, hand sewn, three pieces (35 in; 35 in; 4.5 in) (inscriptions on back: PREMIUM / FINE / SHEETINGS / LL / (printed eagle))

Batting: Thin, cotton

Quilting: hand quilted, white cotton thread, 6-8 stitches per inch, elbow/fan quilting pattern, lines 1” apart.

Binding:  Edges turned in, no separate binding