Thursday, February 26, 2015

Madder And Madder

No, no, I'm not angry, LOL! This week is the discussion of the Civil War period dye stuffs known as "madder," by Barbara Brackman on her blog, Civil War Quilts.

My block from a previous week was chosen by Barbara Brackman to illustrate her teachings and I am very honored. Here it is, sporting two of her very own designs of fabrics in both the star points and the star point backgrounds.


I had always felt confused by the term "madder", but now I know why. There are three distinct color groups that are in the madder family; chocolate browns, peachy or pumpkin oranges, and plums. Gosh, they all sound delicious, now, don't they?


The plums seemed the easiest to pull from my stash, mostly because I could identify them.


On the above block, I was able to use a delightful chocolate scrap in the cornerstones that came from the giveaway box that I won from The Constant Quilter.  The center square is an orange from the same scrap box. Thanks, Wendy!!!


The star points, done in a Jo Morton, were what I would call an ochre yellow for its mustardy overtones, but I believe that the  stylized flowers are also representing madder dyes.


I tried a second block and was very pleased with the results.


Please recall that you may click on any picture to enlarge it.

Remember that stale coffee dye-pot of mine?



Well, one of the fabrics was a "too-white" shirting that I wanted to distress to look antique and here it is, all nice and primitively aged! Nice and muddy!


I used it as the star points in this block. Now you can see that it fits right in with the olde timey look!


The cocoa colored cornerstones were scraps from my 2½" squares "lucky box" and they seemed just right despite being quite anonymous. I had great fun making these three blocks. Thank you, Barbara Brackman!!

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Yesterday, I was able to squeeze in another couple of hours on Ellen Peters' rented longarm. I went to quilt the Edyta Sitar's, "Snowbird" for Laundry Basket Quilts for Moda, jelly roll quilt top.


Geez, the above picture was taken way back in last July! Now that's an UnFinished Object.


It responded beautifully to my simple free-hand loops and hearts (or leaves) design but it was difficult to photograph to view the quilting.


The backing was a plain blue cozy flannel from a Joann's sale about 4 years ago. I guess that's ripened enough, eh? Time to move it along, LOL!


I like "girly-girl" quilts; does it show?


I hope that you are making the quilts that you love, too!

Happy quilting!







5 comments:

Janet O. said...

Your Madder stars are lovely. I really like the mix of fabrics.
Your coffee dying worked out well.
Look at you go on the longarm. Pretty soon I'll have to hire you! : )

Wendy Caton Reed said...

Love your madders! So glad my scraps went to such a good home!

cityquilter grace said...

love your star blocks....and why not as the fabrics are all gorgeous!

helen said...

Always so beautiful fabrics and patchworks to admire on your blog! Plenty of inspirations!
I saw that your block was on the CivilWar Quilts blog - Wow! Congratulations!
Oh, and btw, I heard the Hallelujah all the way over here! :))
Best wishes!

Anonymous said...

You're such an inspiration, and you get so much done! Wow!

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