The document fabric for this reproduction print in my summer collection Civil War Jubilee
is from an old sawtooth star full of madder-style reds and browns, a few stripes and paisleys,
The center square was pieced together from scraps. The quilter didn't have enough
to make the square, or perhaps she cut this piece from a worn dress and just cut across the seam.
I love the shadowy nature of the floral with a crosshatched background.
Civil War Jubilee is a dark line and this is the darkest print in it.
The purplish prints would have been appropriate for clothing if one were in half mourning---
Queen Victoria wore half mourning
for four decades after her husband died.
Etiquette demanded a widow go into full mourning, wearing black for a year and then half-mourning in which she might wear dark colors and prints for another year.
Half mourning dresses
from Godey's in 1848
See a page about Victorian mourning dress at Michigan State University's site:
A Gibson Girl, a merry widow in half-mourning,
by Charles Dana Gibson
And one more thing about this print: We dyed the background a dark color and then printed over it with an even darker color, so the back of the fabric can be used as a dark solid---
Two for one!