"Young Girl Holding a Loose Bouquet"
by Mary Cassatt (detail, 1880)
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Quilt Notes:
Magnificently blessed with an amazingly beautiful quilt design name is this FRAMED BOUQUET. Of course the title might refer to dried flowers (perhaps a bride's nosegay saved from a wedding) framed under glass. But the most obvious explanation is the "frame" border of the block itself, with floral colors all embedded.
Still another possibility might have been a painting of a bouquet which had delighted the quilter's inspiration. Illustrated here as an example, left, is a detail from Mary Cassatt's very sensitive, yet so oddly powerful, "Young Girl Holding a Loose Bouquet," painted during the Impressionist era, in 1880. The color choices for the renderings above were borrowed from Cassatt, see the full painting at wikipaintings.org. In any case, no other quilt pattern has this name, nor does the block itself have multiples titles. It is truly unique, and carries with it an "ancient" pedigree, according to Nancy Cabot, commenting in her Chicago Tribune column, where it made its debut in print on October 10, 1935 (notice the parallel between Cabot's recommended colors and Cassatt's palette):
"FRAMED BOUQUET is an old quilt design with a distinctly modern flavor. It was pieced in the Cumberland mountains region in 1839, years long enough ago to be classified with the ancients of the quilt realm. The original coverlet was pieced from scraps of red, blue and brown. Present day quilt makers have retained the original color combination and added pink, tan and light blue for variety, thereby increasing hundredfold the charm of 'Framed Bouquet.'"
See Jinny Beyer's THE QUILTER'S ALBUM OF PATCHWORK PATTERNS (p. 82-12). Compare with CUMBERLAND GAP for location of inspiration, and also a variety of other designs at this site inspired by color combinations crafted by late 19th and early 20th century women artists:
• Berthe Morisot
GIRL'S JOY
FRENCH STAR
• Sonia Delaunay
FAIR PLAY
ON THE SQUARE
STAR LANE
SUNSHINE AND STAINED GLASS
• Georgia O'Keeffe
ANTIQUE TILE BLOCK
CITY STREETS
FLOWERING NINE PATCH
GREEN RIVER
PATCHWORK PINES
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FRAMED BOUQUET
