Scrappy Jewels was the third quilt that I made after teaching myself to quilt in 2000 from magazines found at various newsagencies. I had seen a book “Victorian Crafts” edited by Tracy Marsh at our local library and along with a lot of soft cloth dolls for children to take to church and embroidered and embellished crafts and fabric covered hat boxes just dripping with fringing there was decoupage and embroidery and all sorts of things used for “high days and holidays” along with a couple of gloriously photographed Drawing Rooms which impressed me no end! The rooms showed the colours of the day in all their glory. Deep ruby red door and window drapes edged with lush fringing, velvet topped occasional tables and wonderful circular drawing room tables draped with heavily fringed, silk embroidered shawls piled high with books and sewing baskets and fabric and lace embellished writing compendiums. Amongst all this over indulgence of the times a photo of a simple quilt stood out and over a period of a few days I found myself going again and again to that page to feast my eyes on the apparent simplicity of the design.
Probably for its time it was quite simple, after all crazy quilting with all its attendant embellishments was all the rage. I already had several rich floral fabrics in my collection and as the 2003 NSW Quilter’s Guild was/were (?) about to have their annual show I enlisted my husband’s help to get as many bejwelled type fabrics as I could. I had absolutely none at that stage as had been mainly working with florals so I needed a good selection and as we only have two chain fabric stores near us I knew I had to be serious about getting as many as I could at the show.
I will spare you the details of how David mowed over these little old ladies as he elbowed his way through boxes of fat quarters. He claims he does not see people “down there” [he is 6' 5"] but he does not see anything else when he has an objective in sight! The amount of times I said “we quilters just don’t do this”!! Well we exhausted all the florals with black and jewel backgrounds and we, okay me, eventually decided that we’d had enough, after a final walk through the quilts on display of course! I was still astounded that the quilts were so thin as all I had been able to find locally was Tontine polyester high loft wadding. Is there any wonder I tied most of my early quilts?
When it came time to arrange the sewn 9 patch blocks with the alternating 15cm one patches I decided to accentuate the red and green aspects, as I had in the 9 patch, and placed more of those than the other jewel colours. So in all the quilt was eight blocks by eight blocks, and I also used several sapphire and opal blocks to achieve the bejewelled effect I was after. I found a very pretty floral fabric at Vinnies to back it with and at last found a pure cotton batting. I tied the quilt as in the book I think it was only a patchwork top with no batting or quilting that I could discern. I bound it the traditional way in black with coral cabbage patch roses that I had found new as two tablecloths at the local Ted Noffs Charity Shop. Other views are here.
This quilt has been well used as a cover for a chest in our lounge room although I had to move it at times as I lost time gazing at the wonderfully rich patterns, especially in the 15cm alternate blocks. There are two sapphire blocks that are simply breath taking! I have not taken leave of my senses everyone truly! Some visitors over the Christmas period were heard to say, “I can’t take my eyes off that quilt, it is sort of hypnotising me”. Isn’t that just the highest praise?
