Here we are, the first block in this series! How exciting!! I am reading along with you! It will be interesting to see where this story takes us and if we meet any new characters, besides Nancy’s neice Joan.
Little four-year-old Joan skipped home from the shopping expedition with glee. Aunt Nancy had purchased the materials for her new quilt. She had watched the clerk measure the five yards of white Peter Pan gingham and had chosen the soft pale green. Of this color she had heard her aunt order one and one-half yards.
As soon as they reached home Nancy hunted up her piece bag and chose a figured print in soft terra cotta tones. She found some medium dark plain green and a scrap of dark green.
She used the figured print for the apple itself and the dark green for stem with medium shade for leaf. In her book of embroidery cotton she found some fast color brown which she later used to embroider the few ragged points at the blossom end of the apple.
She had purchased some fast color embroidery cotton in green, the same shade as the green gingham which she planned for the strips of color between the white blocks.
Had she chosen pink, blue, yellow or lavender for the strips of color she would have purchased embroidery cotton in the color to correspond.
Nancy experimented with various methods of transferring the apple pattern to her block of white.
First she cut her white block, making it six and one-half inches square. This allowed one-quarter inch on all sides for seams, so that her finished block was six inches square.
Since the white material was so soft and fine she found she could lay the square over the pattern, as give in today’s paper. She cut the square out of the paper and held her square of cloth over it. By putting them on the window pane she was able to see the outlines clearly and could follow it with a sharp lead pencil, making a fine mark on the white block. When the outline was on the goods, she took the newspaper square and pasted it on a piece of light weight card board or tag board. This was dried under pressure. Then the apple, the stem and the leaf were cut out and used as patterns. She laid the apple on the goods and cut, allowing one-quarter inch on all sides for turning in. She did the same with the leaf. The stem was cut from a piece of bias material and was twice as wide as pattern given. She basted the edges back on both apple and leaf. The edges of stem were turned back until they met a centre on under side. They were basted in place. After pressing the pieces they were laid in place on the pencil outlines on the quilt block and appliqued with slanting, invisible hemming stitches.
Nancy tried pinning them in place, but she found that she could get the work done more easily if she basted the applique pieces in place and then began the fine stitchery. She used white thread for appliqueing. The initial was worked with a fine outline stitch. She used four strands of cotton. She could have used a chase stitch. In either case she found that she needed to make small stitches and to have fairly heavy strands of cotton, otherwise the effect was weak.
“Nancy Page, Alphabet Quilt – Block #1 – The Apple – text
” Newspapers.com, Edmonton Journal, October 19, 1929, https://www.newspapers.com/article/edmonton-journal-nancy-page-alphabet-qu/152722825/
Are you planning to make this quilt along with Nancy?
If you want to get the whole pattern, you can purchase it as a block-of-the-month here. This is NOT an affiliate link.
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