A Potts Palooza—Part One

Back in April of this past year, we showcased the Margaret Potts Quilt and our versions of a couple of the blocks. In our blog post, Potts of Flowers, we shared that the Potts quilt was made by Margaret Potts and quite a few of her closest friends and relatives. The quilt was passed down through the family and was donated to the Winterthur Museum by Priscilla Hart Miller. 

Starting in January, we will be teaching a six-month block-of-the-month class at Patches Quilting, in Mt. Airy, Maryland, with more blocks from the Potts quilt and amped up embroidery! As we were putting this class together, we knew we wanted to teach some new and interesting stitches to our students. We also wanted to keep the fabric choices simple, so as to better highlight the embroidery and thread choices. The threads used were DMC, Valdani, Gentle Arts, and Weeks as those are the ones carried by our quilt shop. 

Today, we will give you a close-up peek of which blocks we will be doing and some of the unique stitches we chose for edging the fused appliqué. The buttonhole stitch was used on all the appliqués in the original quilt, and while that look has a simple beauty, we wanted to get a little more creative this time. So along with some old favorites stitches, we will be introducing some fun, new stitches in the class. Enjoy!

Potts Block #31

As this is the first block of the class, we have kept the stitches simple

Potts Block #32

Love the variegated DMC floss around the center

Potts Block #13

The Valdani pearl #12 makes a beautiful spiral trellis stitch

Potts Block #19

The cable chain stitch was done around all the blue flowers in this block

Potts Block #12

The Basque stitch gives a lacy edge to this flower

Potts Block #30

One strand of light purple and one strand of dark purple floss
gives a lovely variegated look to the edge of this flower.

If you live in the area—MD, DC, VA, PA—please join us at Patches Quilting and Sewing once a month for the next six months, (January to June, 3rd Saturday of each month, 1PM-4PM,) as we make these six blocks. Since our focus is on the embroidery, we will use fused appliqué; however, the same embellishment techniques could be used for needle-turn appliqué. You can contact Patches at  301-831-0366 to sign up. All you need to bring to the first class is a pair of scissors!

While we are doing six of the Potts blocks, there are 85 in the original quilt. Our hope is that through this class we will develop some "Potts Groupies" who may continue on with the rest of the blocks. For now though, we will stick to the six, as an 85-month block-of-the-month class might be a bit excessive! Stay tuned: next week we will tell you about our visit with Priscilla Miller Hart, the previous owner of this antique gem, as well as sharing interpretations of some of its blocks by other members of the Baltimore Appliqué Society.