Rajah Revisited

I have begun the Block of the Month project from The Quilt Show: Rajah Revisited.  Here are the first two months steps:

The center panel replaces an applique' pattern provided.  The panel is available from an Etsy shop owned by Kay Triplett, Quilt & Textile Collections. It was just a smidgen too narrow so I trimmed the panel to 12.75" and added a .75" finished narrow border to make the center the size I needed to join the pieced border.  It is now just a tiny bit large, no more than .25", and I'll fix that with the next added border.

The Quilt Show is an online subscription world-wide quilt guild.  I have been a member since before it went live.  I get far more than my annual $42.95 membership in things like this pattern, wonderful hour-long shows every two weeks, and so many other videos and articles.  And I've made friends from around the world.  There is usually a free show you can watch to see if you want to subscribe and there are often great shows made available free as a gift from time to time.

 Here is the information from TQS about this Block of the Month patterns, which also provides the history of the quilt and the women who made it:

The Rajah Quilt was sewn by women convicts on board the ship Rajah traveling from England on April 1841 to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land-now known as Tasmania.  The original quilt measured at approximately 128" x 128", but Lessa Siegele recreated it in quarter scale with fabrics from her stash. She used many different scraps, imagining that's what might have happened when the original quilt was being made.  She followed the colors of the original quilt loosely, and tea dyed fabrics that didn't look old enough.  You can obtain the same look with reproduction fabrics, or make a more contemporary-looking version like the one created for TQS.

While looking at photos of antique quilts I have saved, I discovered the original Rajah Quilt had caught my eye some time ago.  Here is the original:

I'm not sure if I'll stick with the pattern provided, in quarter scale, or work bigger.  Time will tell.

Today I also made the first block of the Westering Women block of the month, provided by quilt historian, author, fabric designer, Barbara Brackman:

This is a 12" block and there will be 12 blocks for this sampler.  The posts are so full of wonderful historical information--I learn so much by reading them.

I hope you have found something new and wonderful to work on.

Let's Quilt!

Barbara