Infinite Variety: Thee Centuries of Red and White Quilts,  the quilt show I blogged about earlier inspired me to finish a redwork quilt I started in 2001.  Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since I've even looked at these blocks.  This will also be another UFO I'll be completing this year.  The box held all the embroidered blocks and the pieced setting squares which I pieced together last night.  I don't know what took me so long to finish this quilt, I really like it now that it's up on the design wall.   I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do for the borders.  I have some of the red fabric left but, I'm very limited on the ivory and I'll never match it after all these years. I'll come up with something though, I just need to think about it for a few days.

The layout patttern and some of the tracings are from the Quilts & More Redwork book by Laurene Sinema.

Redwork became propular in the late 1870's whenTurkey Red was the craze. The root from the Madder plant was used to create the secret recipe for the "Turkey Red" dye.  The durabilty and color fastness of the dye were highly valued back then and attributed to it's popularity. It reached it's peak of popularity between 1888 and 1935. As other colors or embroidery thread became available redwork lost it's popularity. 

Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White quilts

I  commented in March that this show was coming to New York. Now that it has come and gone, I've seen the photos and read the reviews, I am so sorry I didn't make a point of going to NYC, just for the show.    Check out the link to Martha Stewart's Blog.   It contains a slideshow of 37 photos of the show.   It really was spectacular and the title, "Infinite Variety" is perfect.   All 650 quilts are from the private collection of Joanna Rose.