The Start of Summer

I know we are nearing the End of Summer - but I'm talking about a Challenge Quilt, the second in our Seasons Challenge series.

The block for Summer is a quirky Carolina Lily. I have rotated it so you can fully appreciate our by-gone quilter's original touches.

She has chosen that bold little black and white print for the vase or flower pot. I'm used to seeing baskets of flowers with little triangles at the sides for feet, with background to fill in the lower point and no little handles, but our version has been seen before, published in 1981, according to our favorite quilt block source, Barbara Brackman. Here's how it's colored in Blockbase, the software version of her catalog.

The block has also been cataloged as  Royal Dutch Tulip and Vase, and as Royal Japanese Vase - those names being older than Carolina Lily for this version, though the quilts I saw by searching the Quilt Index under all of these names have some version of the two smaller triangles at the sides of the vase rather than this one - is that maybe an unsupported triangle on a table?

What I thought was the most original innovation our quilter made, changing the base of the flower to pink and turn two of the petals into leaves, perhaps envisioning a tulip, has also been done before, I found in my searches for Lily quilts.  But a unique touch was her use of a deeper green for the stem (and handles) as she used for the leaves.

Her piecing is definitely quirky - there are some very interesting seam lines in those pieces she used for the background, I have decided to leave her block intact. 

You can see that it was probably intended to be a 12 inch block. It's going to take just a little trimming and an additional sliver of muslin or two to get it to quilt flat without putting pleats in the work someplace.

I'm going to celebrate summer and this block in my setting, which uses an original variation on a traditional block.  Nothing to do with Carolina Lilies, or Tulips, or any other flower.