Sara wows us again! This time, she shares some of her vintage swatches in the popular turkey reds, creams and both indigo and wedgewood blues. This delightful mix of small calicos, large florals and beautiful, hard-to-find prints offers a wide array of coveted textile designs from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The fondue prints, also known as ombré or rainbow prints, are a combination of the vivid reds and blues of the late 19th century, while the narrower stripe is indicative of those fabrics produced several decades later. Additionally, Sara has chosen some patterns with a slightly mottled ground for the exaggerated look produced by the overdye process often found on textiles from that time period.

We tend to think of quilts from the Civil War era as full of blues, grays, blacks - generally dark colors. These fabrics, reproduced from a quilt of the same name in the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum collections, is a cheerful exception.  Most of the fabrics in this quilt date back to 1860-1880, although RMQM believes the black ombre may have been a little earlier. The vibrant green color in the small-scale prints was obtained by an overdyeing process popular at that time. The other prints, although typical of the time period, are somewhat rare finds: the dark red with blue and brown, the double pink with machine ground, turkey red with chrome yellow, and brilliant Prussian blue. It is these beautiful fabrics that inspired Blue Hill Fabrics™ to re-create a vintage collection that would appeal to both traditionalists and contemporary quilt artists.