Victoria's Crown Sampler
Collection of Barbara Brackman & Terry Thompson
1840-1865
We are all missing Victoria in the U.S. this week so I thought I'd show this sampler quilt that Terry and I bought together years ago. It's been traded back and forth and now it's at my house where I need to take a better photo I see.
Terry made a pattern from it. We were at the time enthralled with another Queen Victoria fiction, the movie Mrs. Brown with Judi Dench, so she called it Mrs. Brown's Quilt
Kathy Suprenant used the pattern to make one with feather quilting in the border and a lovely
muted red and green color scheme.
Wanda Hizer of Marietta, Georgia, won a prize with her Sweet Georgia Brown.
Wanda's also has a feather in the border.
And I found Donna Johnson's version at the Quilt Index. She added
a dogtooth border around her feather quilting.
The pattern is unusual in that it features a variation of the design called Caesar's Crown or Victoria's Crown with a sampler of florals and fruit.
Ruth Finley defined the pattern in her 1929 book. We tend to call
any of the many variations Victoria's Crown or Caesar's Crown.
BlockBase shows related designs under the Wheels category
You could print out a pattern for any one of these any size with the program.
The pieced pattern is occasionally seen with applique.
Here are two examples from the internet.
They have foliage but not the variety of foliage that our quilt has.
The pattern with greenery is #31.25 or 31.26 in my Encyclopedia of Applique, Harrison Rose.
I'd call these two "31.26 variations."
Perhaps the first quilt columnist to call it Harrison Rose was Nancy Cabot in the Chicago Tribune in 1933.
Here's Carrie Hall's version done in the early 1930s from
collection of the Spencer Museum of Art.
Search the collection for Harrison Rose
Dawn at the Collector with a Needle blog has sewn a reproduction
of one she owns.
EveryStitch Blog: Hand quilting a feather in the border of a Harrison Rose.
More on Victoria's Crown: