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Pieceful Dreams : A “Charming” History
Pieceful Dreams Quilt Company is proud to be the home of the original Charmalade Charm Quilt Kit! You may be wondering… what exactly is a “Charmalade” and does it taste good??
Well, in a Charmalade quilt kit, there are 72 squares of fruity and printed fabrics, the backing, binding and border. Everything (but the needle and thread) needed to make and 18” x 20” mini quilt. A great project for all ages and experience levels. Debuting on national television, we sold well over 3000 kits the first year. As far as food group? Well, it is packed in a quart jar and the fruit fabrics do look delicious—but it’s not edible! |
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From Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1835, “Perhaps there is no patch-work that is prettier or more ingenious that the hexagon, or six-sided; this is also called honeycomb patch-work.” In England, this one-patch design was used quite often. The seamstress would make a hexagon template and cover it with various fabrics. Usually they would use silk, satin and velvet that created a work more worthy of their time. Collecting buttons became popular around this time. One could take one-of-a-kind buttons and string them to make rope. This “charm” string often had folklore attached. When you strung a certain amount of buttons, your “prince charming” would find you, or you might lead a “charmed” life.
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Button collecting of the mid 1800’s soon sparked the quilter’s fancy. From around the 1870’s, one-of-a-kind fabrics were stitched together to create the “charm quilt.” The challenge was on! Scrap bags were put to use. Trading and collecting fabric scraps kept many a quilter busy. Not always would the goal be attained where not one fabric was repeated, but very often was the case. As the fabrics and color schemes changed over the years, so would the charm quilts. The late nineteenth-century showed madder-style colors of earthen browns, rusts, and reds. As the century turned, charm quilts became filled with grays, blues, burgundies and shirting whites. The double pink cottons were represented all through the years providing continuity. The style receded somewhat by the 1920’s. However, during the 1930’s it picked back up again utilizing feed sack prints. |