Stars in a Time Warp 4: Chrome Orange or Cheddar

Becky Brown

Reproduction block with Chrome orange plain

 and chrome yellow print

Vintage mid-19th century applique

Chrome orange is a color familiar to every collector of antique quilts.

Vintage quilt about 1870, photo from the Quilt Complex

Chrome orange in the stars and the stripes.

Read more about this quilt here:

http://blog.thequiltcomplex.com/2009/06/sandra-mitchell-queen-of-cheddar.html

Vintage quilt, probably Pennsylvania, end of the 19th century

After 1840 or so chrome orange in prints and plains was popular for piecing and a favorite accent to the reds and greens of appliqué florals. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, quiltmakers in parts of Pennsylvania and the Southern United States considered the color the perfect background for appliqué and pieced designs.

Hexagon quilt mid-19th-century

Chrome yellow at the top and chrome orange at the bottom 

were closely related in chemistry.

Reproduction block by Bettina Havig

We'll make chrome orange stars this week, to use a name the dyers and printers used. 

William Crookes captioned this printed plaid "Chrome Orange Light and Dark"

in his Practical Handbook of Dyeing and Calico Printing,

published in 1874, 

Chrome dyes are mineral dyes, rather than vegetable dyes.

Doll quilt about 1850

Flying Geese quilt about 1840-1860

We call it cheddar today.

Vintage quilt about 1880

Polka dots (circular figures set in a diagonal grid)

were popular on chrome orange. The prints

are often quite simple.

Vintage Quilt, late 19th-century

Detail of an album sampler dated 1857.

It's called the Odd Lady Quilt, perhaps a

reference to the Odd Fellows or to the style where every block is different.

Vintage quilt, about 1880-1900

When shaded like this the Evening Star block loses its starry qualities.

You occasionally run across a complex chrome orange print,

here combined with chrome yellow.

Vintage quilt about 1880-1910

Kathlyn Sullivan collects Cheddar or Chrome Orange

quilts; many of them from North Carolina.

After the Civil War, Southerners opened fabric mills, some specializing in solid colors and plaids. Chrome orange plains dyed with the mineral dye were colorfast and inexpensive leading to a Southern regional style of solid color quilts featuring chrome orange.

Reproductions:

Antique Diva Pyramids (detail) by Diana Petterson from History Repeated

Using a lot of chrome orange creates a certain look,

style often seen in the quilts of the 19th-century Patchwork Divas group.

The color is so strong it's sometimes hard to find. Yellows don't sell

as well as blues or greens.

Repro Quilt Lover recommends Moda's Bella Solid

9900-152 called Cheddar.

See why she has two bolts here:

http://reproquiltlover.blogspot.com/2012/11/cheddar-madness-giveaway.html

Reproduction quilt by Marcie at PatchaLot

Rosemary Youngs, Macaroni and Cheese reproduction, 2011

There are a variety of cheddary colors out there. Rosemary

seems to have a lot of this solid in her stash.

I think she used 4" blocks so she probably still

has a lot of chrome orange reproduction left.

Three chrome orange prints from Nancy Gere's Colonies: Cheddar and Poison Green

The PolkaDotChicken blog used a Moda dot from an old collection called Rooftop Garden.

That particular dot is probably tough to find now, but the point of this QuiltAlong is to teach you what to look for---bright orange background with white or brown/black dots.

Also look for bright cheesey-backgrounds with spaced-out figures.

Mercer County Star by Jean Stanclift used a chrome orange

and a chrome yellow from some of my early collections.

Star Puzzle by Jean Stanclift.

When we had our Sunflower Pattern Co-op

we were on a cheddar and blue roll.

Reproduction Star by Bettina Havig

Reproduction Star by Becky Brown

If the authentic cheddar colors are too much for

you remember you can use toned-down shades for

an interpretation of an antique quilt rather than a copy.

Go towards the pumpkin color or a brownish-gold.

Jo Morton's Spice Market

But even if you aren't comfortable with a true cheddary chrome orange

you should try it. As Becky says:

 "Cheddar/Orange is my least favorite color - until now - I have [the block at the top of the page] pinned up and can't stop looking at it, and loving it."

Setting Idea for Your Stack of Star Blocks

Alternate Plain Blocks on Point

Reproduction quilt by Carol Hopkins, 

Tribute to Judie [Rothermel]

Set the blocks on point with an alternate unpieced square for a very traditional look. Carol's used a few of Judie's 19th-century yellow-orange prints to move our eye around this composition.

Vintage quilt from first half of the 19th century,

Holstein Collection, International Quilt Study Center & Museum.

Reproduction quilt by Claire McKarns

Claire used a similar set for her 2010

AQSG Star Study quilt.

Reproduction quilt by the Women Who Run With Scissors

Years ago our sewing group made this star quilt

with two borders to benefit our guild. Same set:

pieced and appliqued borders with an updated

border repeat.

One More Thing about Chrome Orange

A spill stained the white and damaged the chrome orange

The mineral dye chrome orange is quite colorfast, resisting light so it doesn't fade. But like Prussian blue it reacts to the acid/alkalai balance in laundering. Acids in the water or in a spill can draw out the orange leaving a pale yellow green as in the above quilt. We don't use chromes anymore for dyeing. The minerals are too dangerous to workers.

More posts on chrome orange:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/09/chrome-orange-background-and-accent.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/02/chrome-orange-chrome-yellow.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2009/12/chrome-orange.html