Winnetka: Richmond Reds

The basket weave print in my new Moda collection Richmond Reds is reproduced from a scrap of cotton printed in periwinkle blue on white. Because this collection leans towards the warmer side of the color wheel we colored it in eight different shades of madder style reds, brown plus an olive.

In their index to print style, Meller & Elffers classify basketweaves with latticework.

The idea of a textural illusion has long been an important part of printing fabric.

Lane's Net is a popular print with a texture that dates back to the early-19th century.

Roller printing's detail allowed print designers to go all-out in creating a 3-D image.

Basketweaves continue to be popular with designers and customers. The print style is less of a clue to date than the color. The green print above is a mid-20th-century feedsack.

The blue-violet in my document print is a good clue

to 1870-1890, but the print is such a classic, especially in madder-style reds and browns,

that you could use it in any 19th-century period quilt.

Why Winnetka? For this line and the next I picked names of American towns

with a nice lilt. There's a Winnetka, California but I was thinking of Illinois.

As was the Bob Crosby band. Listen to the jazz song "Big Noise from Winnetka," written in 1938 by Bob Haggart and Ray Baudac.  They must have liked the sound of the word too. Click here for a YouTube video.