A Broderie Perse Dresden!

One of our gals brought the most wonderful antique quilt top to show & share and I just went nuts over it.

We’ve all seen Dresden Plate quilts before – they were all the rage through the 1930s and into the 1940s.  A true classic of quilt making.

 But I know you’ve never seen one like this either!

The first thing I noticed was white fans on that typical sunny 1930s background.

And then I looked and thought all of those fans were fussy cut because they looked “striped” to me.

And when I got up close and personal?

Holy Moly!  There was a whole lot of fussy cutting of flowers and applique and embroidery going on!

We had to lay it out and get some close up looks:

This is a summer spread, it was never quilted.

WOW!

Every single flower you see here was cut out of 1930s floral prints and hand appliqued down.  Embroidered stems were added to each little bouquet.  I can’t imagine the amount of work or the time it took to do this whole quilt this way – it is extremely large!

Check out that fan blade border!

Even the little flowers on the background were motifs cut from cloth and hand stitched onto the background as if a summer breeze had lifted them from the garden and deposited them in random fashion.

Some of the fans have cream and white backgrounds mixed.

She must have just been using what she had!

Each petal is different than the next with a different flower.

Isn’t this just wonderful?

It’s a garden of ingenuity!

And the stitching isn’t perfect!

There is a reason that I took this close up shot of one of the blossoms –applique doesn’t have to be completely invisible to be beautiful.  It doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfectly wonderful.  Our maker used white thread to applique everything down in a close whipstitch.  This is a fabulous piece of workmanship!  We have to get over our pursuit of perfection and just let our imaginations soar, doing the best we can and not berating ourselves for our hand efforts and best tries.

Love it, make it, quilt it, rejoice that we did it!!

Yesterday for me started with book orders to the post office, and moved on to a drive to Charlotte to get my Global Entry interview over with.  It had to happen at a hub airport, so yes, off I went to the airport 80 miles away on a day I wasn’t flying because it was the only day on their calendar that would work with  mine.  Hopefully now I can more easily come in and out of the country and I should be getting TSA pre-check at least 90% of the time which will expedite the whole process.

I stopped at Bass Pro Shops to pick up some gear for Peru.  We are supposed to have long pants and long sleeved shirts in the hot hot jungle to protect from bugs and barbs and whatever else, so I got some quick-dry light weight hiking pants that can roll up to be capris, or stay long, and the legs zip off to be shorts if I so need them too – and they won’t be hot. Same with the shirt…long sleeve doesn’t have to mean hot and they had some that were uv protection.

Just a few more things to get and I’ll be ready for Peru!

It’s been raining steady since I got home from Washington ((It rained the last couple of days there too!)) and I wanted to share the sound of the rain on the new tin roof awning that the guys built while I was in Maine!

Here you can see it going up!

That’s son Jeff on the top, helping his dad.

This was on my one day home in between Maine and Washington!

I love it! Can’t wait to get some wicker out here..LOL!

But this is what it has sounded like since getting home – the most soothing sound!  There is nothing like the sound of rain on a tin roof!

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

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