Lala's Irish Chain - Week IV

 

Welcome back to Week 4 of Lala's Irish Chain.  This week's step is making a two-patch unit joining your background 2-1/2" squares with assorted 2-1/2" squares from your jelly roll or stash.

Press seams toward the assorted print fabric.  This will help with nesting seams when the patchwork blocks are assembled.

Since Lala was a seamstress, making dresses for several ladies in Trinidad, I am sure she had a good variety of fabrics to choose from, including some feed sack fabrics from flour and sugar bags at the mercantile or store.  

Her paid work as a seamstress gave her some extra spending money.  Possibly to more easily afford the purchase of yardage such as the pink fabric for this quilt.  

The two oldest daughters Luna and Viola were 2 years apart in age. Luna was often sick as a little girl so she did not start school as she should have.  Lala and WD chose to enroll them both in school at the same time and graduated high school together.

As you can see from the photos, they were often dressed alike. 

They were stylish young ladies.  They were not like "cobbler's children who went without shoes".  Their clothing was quite fashionable.  And given the number of photos we have from "back in the day", the family was considered one of the more affluent families in town.  For a family in the early 1900s to have their own camera was quite unusual.

Perhaps Lala presenting her well-dressed family was a sort of a calling card of the day.  

Both Luna and Viola told the story of a time when they were young ladies in the upstairs of the house having fun parading around in their one-piece undergarments. The girls were really having a good time.  A lady had come for a fitting and while she was in the house, the man that came with her waited outside in the front yard.  The man was not bored as he waited patiently.

Isn't that a fun and hilarious story?  Nonetheless... I wonder how many of the fabrics in this quilt came from customer's clothing that Lala made?  Wouldn't it be fun to know?

I'll never know the answer to that... but I did want to know what made the Irish Chain quilts different?  And, what's the difference in the single, double and triple Irish Chain quilts?  In my research I saw two different explanations.

The simple answer had to do with the number of pieces in the patchwork blocks... Single=9-patch or 3x3; Double =5x5 and triple =7x7.

A more detailed and complex answer was offered here.  I'll be honest... I got really confused by their explanation and photos since many of their quilts were with the squares on point or diagonal layout.  But I kept searching...  Several places simplified it by saying that the single Irish Chain was a two-color quilt with the darker contrasting color making a diagonal chain across the quilt.  The double uses three colors in a manner so that there are two chain lines and the triple uses 4 fabrics, making the design more complex. Follow the link above to see more examples of the varying details of a double and triple.

I found most often that single chains were set square.  Many of the double and triple Irish Chain quilts I saw had the blocks on point.  Lala's is unique in the fact that it is set square or straight.  And I decided that technically... it is a Double Irish Chain because it has 25 blocks in the patchwork unit.  But the color placement of the background fabric within the patchwork unit and the cornerstones give some illusion of a more complex layout. 

It is simply Lala's scrappy Irish Chain!  That's my story and I'm sticking to it... LOL.  There you go... you have the next step, so it is time to get busy making two-sies. :)

I've always liked scrappy quilts and still enjoy the occasional "archaeological dig" in the scrap bin and the opportunity to recall where fabrics were used... whether a dress, shorts or pajamas for one of the girls or whose quilt it was purchased for.  Good memories!

Do you like truly scrappy quilts? 

I define this as everything leftover from other projects and you make do... 

Or do you like controlled or organized scrappy?

Which is what I consider this quilt because I used a jelly roll and another collection of fabric that had similar colors and prints.

Leave a comment... I'd love to hear from you!

Keep piecing,

Melva

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