Wednesday, December 31, 2014

New "Old" Blocks


I bought some Pennsylvania Dutch quilt blocks, from a woman who dated them at about the late 1890's, early 1900's. They have that distinctive bright mustardy yellow with a tiny red print.  You don't see a lot of reproduction yellows as bright as these; I just love the bold colors (the yellow is the closest to real yellow in the 3rd photo down). I'm not sure what I will do with them at the moment, but just looking and admiring is fun!

Double pink, green and mustard yellow makes the block pop.


A nice rich red with the mustard yellow. Almost glows in the dark.
What I did not count on was some little mouse got to these blocks before me, and made a very pretty house from some of the red and yellow blocks!

Ms. mouse had good "taste" in fabric.

More mouse work.
 It will be easy to repair these blocks, but not so easy to find the right yellow. I have found a couple of reproductions that could work, but the hand of the new fabric is so thick and stiff compared to the older fabric that I don't want to go that route yet.

There are people who specialize in selling older fabrics, but I have found the yellow to be on the rare side, thus the price is high (50 dollars or more a yard, anyone?)  And they sell the fabric in small bits (i.e. 15 inches by 20) but 25 dollars for a small hunk of fabric? Yikes. I still hold out hope that I'll find a nice stash of a variety of mustard yellows and bright reds that someone will beg me to take off their hands. Hah.



1 comment:

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

Maybe you can just make the quilt with less blocks and use a the good parts of the chewed ones to do repair.