The first block is finished from the Red/White Challenge!
Sara finished up her Churn Dash block and sent it to me, and she was very happy to have completed her square (she’s a beginning quilter). I think it looks beautiful–there’s something so simple yet lovely about these two colors put together.
I think the vibrancy of the red, which acts as a dark value, really makes the red/white combination pop. That old saying “color gets the credit but value does all the work,” applies in this instance. We think it is because of the red that the block looks so crisp. But it’s the deeper (a darker value) red that is doing the work, as you can see in the block below.
I’ve simply lightened the red to a medium color. The block is not nearly as vibrant or interesting.
Red also has its own stories and folklore, from the popular red and green Baltimore Album quilts, to this story, related in the book Wild by Design (Berlow and Crews):
“[A quilter] recalled an instance from her youth in the early twentieth century, when she and her mother traveled to the dry goods store to buy some fabric for hope chest quilts:
‘We had picked three pieces of remnant blue and was just fingerin’ some red calico. We was jest palnnin’ on enough for the middle squares from that.
‘Just then Papa came in behind us and I guess he saw us lookin’. He just walked right past us like he wasn’t with us, right up to the clerk and said, “How much cloth is on that bolt?”
‘The clerk said, “Twenty yards.”
‘Papa never looked around. He just said, “I’ll take it all!”
‘He picked up that whole bolt of red calico and carried it to the wagon. Mama and me just laughed to beat the band. Twenty yards of red. Can you imagine?’ ”
And in honor of men who buy red bolts of calico, and help us in all we do, Happy Fathers Day!
——-Update———Two Red/White Challenge Blocks are In!———-
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 