Nursery Rhyme Pattern in Jayne's Quilt...

I kind of love the nusery rhyme pattern most as all of them have the little text line in it.

Little Miss Muffet



Sat on a tuffet,
Eating of curds and whey;
There came a spider,
And sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

On Project Gutenberg I found the book The Little Mother Goose published in 1912 by "Good Housekeeping Magazine" with the lovely illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith. All of the nursery rhyme pattern in Jayne's quilt are based on the original artwork of this female illustrator.

Apparently her work must have been quite popular in her time as those Mother Goose illustration where already available as Redwork pattern then according to Deborah Harding

Later on the pattern was also published by Butterick. A re-print of that vintage Butterick pattern is available from
Patternbee


Jessie Willcox Smith- Bio Links
http://www.ortakales.com/illustrators/Smith.html
http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/jwsmith.htm
http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/is/enroom/illustrators/smith.htm

and the wounderful Children Book Illustrator site www.nocloo.com with some of her artwork:
http://www.nocloo.com/gallery2/v/jessie-wilcox-smith-garden-verses/
http://www.nocloo.com/gallery2/v/jessie-wilcox-smith-north-wind/

May I introduce Greta Lillian Rutledge

Jayne’s Grandmother and the quilter of her Redwork Quilt.

I have a little green cardboard box with all he finished Redwork blocks of my re-make of Jayne’s quilt. It is like a little treasure trove, by now it contains 11 of the quilt’s squares.

In a file folder I keep the patterns in all their different stages.

• the printouts of the photo jpgs Jayne sent me from all the individual Redwork block in her quilt, for which I am ever greaful
  
• my tracings on overhead films which I made from each block to act as my pattern masters that I scanned and then resized to fit the fabric squares I choose
  
• and last but not least all iron-on transfers of the final pattern I made by tracing the pattern on the back of paper print-outs
  

I also filed all the little stories Barb send me, the mails I received on my progress and the comments that where made on the photos in my flickr photo file.

And very special pieces in my little collection are the two b&w photos Barb sent me. A potrait of Greta Lillian Rutledge which was the source for my Redwork picture you can see in this post and another b&w print showing Greta Lillian and her little son Floyd for whom she made the quilt so many years ago.

Floyd's Rose Twigs Block

Life is beautiful with happy and sad times

and while working on recreating Jayne’s quilt

so many things happen.

In memory of the little boy for which the original Redwork Quilt

was made by his loving mother.

Jayne's Quilt - some more pictures of the finished blocks

The finished blocks so far and given my day job and other craft projects always intefering ;-) I really did good....



The "date block" which I think shows an aster but I am not too sure about the names of the flowers in this quilt. Nice little frenshknots in the blossoms middle by the way....




Another one of the "little girls" block, the most recent one and yet soo many more blocks to stitch.

Little Girl with Balloon

One of the "Series-D" pattern from the Victoria Quilt Block Company. She has been a wee bit difficult.

I was almost finished with the first version of that little girl when I saw a small whole in the fabric and all of a sudden "everything" about her seemed wrong: two small, no details in the hand and worst of all facing the in the wrong direction...so I decided to go back to square one.

Now, here you can see on the left my (almost finished) first version and on the right the way I wanted her to look like.... can you spot the difference?

First of the floral pattern

I do not exactly know what kind of flower this is but it was fun stitching it.

First Block - "October 15" Flower

The first of 32 blocks finished and I really like the result...and yes I know the c is missing but it wasn't on the orignal and I didn't want to change that.



The iron-on transfer and the "stamped" pattern for this block.

Pattern Research

I have very limited sources to research the pattern other than the internet. A great book I own is the "Red & White American Redwork Quilts" from Deborah Harding (ISBN 0-8478-2244-3)". Here I found quite a few of the nursery rhyme e.g. "Mother Goose" pattern Jayne's and Barb's grandmother used for her quilt.



According to Deborah Harding's book the nursery rhyme pattern originally are from the pre-stamped blocks series-A and series-D sold by the "Victoria Quilt Block Company". However, while retracing the pattern I found too many little differences between the blocks and the "original", therefore I doubt Jayne's and Barb's grandmother used the pre-stamped fabric blocks. Maybe she traced them from a cataloque or another quilt...

The Master Piece

This is the beautiful vintage Redwork Quilt Jayne was referring to. Made by Jayne's and Barb's grandmother for her little son, their father. I fell in love with its simple beauty and was bold enough to ask Jayne if I could recreate the quilt. Now, over several weeks Jayne fotographed every single blook for me and sent me the sets via email.



I tried and tested several ways to get as accurate copies of the blocks as possible and in the end I printed every one of her fotograph, traced them onto a clear overhead films and scanned that linedrawing back to a jpg file.

All those jpgs I could then resize on my computer to get more or less same sized print-outs. The print-out I "simply" retraced with my iron-on pencil. That way I created iron-on transfers which I "stamped" onto my fabric.

It is as much work as it sounds but I am enjoying every single moment of it. The more I work with the pattern the more I find out about the "best" techniques to trace. Besides, I am not working solely on this quilt - I love to work on several projects at the same time that way I don't get overwelmed...

And then, with preparing the pattern I had to choose the embroidery floss and white fabric I wanted to make this quilt with.



The fabric is from my stash of vintage white cotton. It is heavier than the regular "Kona" cotton but not as rough as it apears in this close-up shot. It is very nice to work with as it feels like it is "starched".



As for the shade of red I decided to go with the Anchor # 1005. ( Second from above). It is a darker shade of red than my favourite Anchor # 47 (First one from above) I think it looks more vintage...well at least to me.

Jayne's Quilt....

This is my little Redwork quilt that started everything. I posted this photo in my flickr file and Jayne ( Queen Conch ) commented it reminded her of her dad's youth quilt.