Calico Garden

I started my Calico Garden journey about nine years ago. The patterns were included in the wonderful book "Enduring Grace - Quilts From the Shelburne Museum" by Celia Y. Oliver. I just love the little quilt. I think when photocopying to enlarge the pattern sheets I made the copies a little bigger than prescribed for. I am not sure, but I think I did. It was one of my first attepts at applique work, so I suppose I made them a little easier to make by making them bigger. The quilt was made by Florence Peto. She used vintage fabrics, and so the quilt is a historian's dream for studying fabrics. Her idea was that by incorporating precious fabrics she would preserve them. Here's how she described the quilt in a letter to the Shelburne museum in 1951:
"It has always been my desire to preserve fascinating old fabrics. One time I bought up whole cartons of scraps - none of (which) were over two inches square! But they were charming, ... obviously handsome examples of early hand-blocking and early copperplates as well as English and French calicoes. Calico Garden was (made) to use up the tiny pieces. (All the little designs are original with me.) I made the little quilt first and later, from the rest of the fabrics, a large quilt. ... I called it a 'Mother and Daughter set' All the materials are old except the white broadcloth background and the small flowered yellow backing."

I can just dream of finding "cartons of scraps"...
I had not read the exerpt above too thoroughly. I had no idea there existed a bigger quilt. But just yesterday I found an image of the mother quilt here:

Here is also some online information:

And here are some lovely versions:

I think I will be using the greyish Jo Morton fabric as sashing, and just some simple square in a square corner blocks. Just thinking out loud...