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| My "Christmas quilts" on a farm ladder. |
As it turns out, the Victorians used many different color palettes for Christmas greetings and decorations. But in 1931, Coca-Cola hired an artist to create a memorable image of Santa Claus for an ad campaign, and the rest is history. Haddon Sundblom's fat, jolly, white-bearded Santa dressed in bright red took hold in American culture.
Holly with it's red berries had already been part of Roman winter solstice celebrations. The color combination seen in nature is pleasing to the eye, and those who own beautiful antique red and green quilts often display them at Christmas.
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| A four-block 19th century applique quilt. Stephanie Whitson's personal collection |
- Boil cotton in lye of Barilla or wood ash
- Wash and dry
- Steep in a liquor of Barilla ash or soda plus sheep's dung and olive oil
- Rinse, let stand 12 hours, dry
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 three times
- Steep in a fresh liquor of Barilla ash or soda, sheep's dung, olive oil, and white argol.
- Rinse and dry.
- Repeat steps 6 and 7 three times.
- Treat with gall nut solution
- Wash and dry
- Repeat steps 9 and 10 once
- Treat with a solution of alum, or alum mixed with ashes of Saccharum Saturni
- Dry, wash, dry
- Madder once or twice with Turkey madder to which a little sheep's blood is added
- Wash
- Boil in lye made of soda ash or the dung liquor
- Wash and dry
Colorfast green presented challenges, too. Mixing blue and yellow might yield a nice green ... but over time, if the yellow faded, the green would give way to blue. Hence, many antique quilts have vines sporting blue leaves. Synthetic green dyes developed in the 1870s faded to khaki or dun. You can see that in the central block of a once red-and-green quilt I purchased many years ago because I fell in love with the overall design and form. Of course I planned at the time to copy the quilt and show what it would have looked like originally. That's never happened, but I still adore this quilt for what I see in my minds' eye every time I look at it.
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| Christmas table topper made by Stephanie Grace Whitson |
Of course quilters today don't have to worry about fading ... right? Wrong. I've worked with red fabric from which the dye bled until it had been washed numerous times. I know more than one quilter who made a gorgeous red and white or red and green quilt, only to have the reds bleed and turn the quilt pink in the wash. Quilters beware!
Do you decorate with red and green for Christmas or do you prefer another color scheme?
Whatever your color choice, I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas!
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Stephanie Grace Whitson has been writing Christian historical fiction full time
since the 1990s. She loves incorporating quilts and quilting into her stories. Her novella in the Basket Brigade Christmas collection features the women of a Ladies Aid Society who sew for wounded warriors during the Civil War.
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