Stars in a Time Warp 39: Claret Red

Reproduction star by Becky Brown

Reproduction star by Bettina Havig in a claret red ground print

with a horsey conversation shirting.

Collection: Jan at WhataLoadofScrap

Vintage stars. 

Claret reds with white shirtings, an early 20th century classic.

Repro block by Evelyne

Claret red is a shade of wine red. We might call it burgundy.

Vintage star from about 1900. Claret reds also were paired with

indigos--- navies and cadet blues.

The claret prints were usually monochromes, white figures on red ground (as were the

blues and blacks.) The color seems to have come from a new synthetic dye.  I'd guess the spare look was influenced by economics: One color on white was cheaper to print, but the minimalism might have been a new, fresh look after late-Victorian fashions.

Louise's star quilt from the same time.

The wine-colored red was part of a new color

scheme in the 1890s.

Louise found this terrific example of a turnof-the-20th-century quilt at a thrift shop.

Style tip from about 1905: Red goes with red.

Quilt date-inscribed 1897

Turkey red star blocks in wine red sashing.

Quilts in this color palette seem so "countrified" to us, but in 1900

this was the pinnacle of cotton quilt fashion.

Quilt date-inscribed 1892

If you want to capture that look you need

to have a stash of reds shading towards what

we called cranberry in the 1970s.

Reproductions

Repro block by Bettina Havig

During the 1990s I copied a charm quilt in the 1890s  palette.

I hand pieced those squares over several years.

The hardest part was finding the right shades. Navy

prints were rare for several years.

Cranberry reds got hard to find.

But this is a good year for wine-reds.

Barb Eikmeier has a few

in her Vintage Shirtings and Dress Prints

A couple of Barb's claret reds in Becky's reproduction block.

The smaller, darker dot is Moda Essential Dots

Jan Patek's new Hawthorne Ridge features a dark wine colorway.

Pam Buda has a few monochromes in Treenware and Berries

And so does Judie Rothermel in Scarlet Evening

What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?

Frame Them

Becky's been making a frame for each as she goes.

She put it together during Hurricane Joaquin this week

alternating dark and light frames.

The plan

More pictures of the finished top later.

Another idea: frame it twice with dark and light frames.

This set was on Etsy once.

I saw this set for Blackbird Designs new fabric line Country Orchard when I was at Prairie Point Quilts in Shawnee, Kansas, a few weeks ago. The pattern is Terry Atkinson's Lucky Stars

One More Thing About Claret

Claret is an old name for a wine red color or maroon, but this particular shade of cotton seems to have arrived about 1890.

An 1898 dye manual calls Claret red prints:

"An important style in calico-printing and much in demand..."

and gives a new formula for a brighter though not so colorfast red.

Quilt top date-inscribed 1904

Most of these claret reds seem quite colorfast a century later, however.

Block from a set date-inscribed 1903