BERKELEY QUILT

I've been feeling the need to finish some very old quilt projects lately. I pulled this out several weeks ago and realized it just needed to have the quilting finished on the border and binding put on it. Easy peasy.

I got the last of the binding nailed down over the weekend and can call this one officially finished! Yeah!

This quilt is my original block design after the Freeman Ford chair, designed by the architects Greene & Greene and built by the Hall brothers in 1908. I started working on this quilt in 2003 after Darrell and I went on a fact-gathering trip (vacation for me) where Darrell was going around to get information for his since published book. Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Workshop.

We stopped at the University of California, Berkeley's architectural archives where Darrell had made an appointment to look at original documents from the Greene's, circa 1900-1915. We had also made a few stops at quilt shops in the area, where I bought some of the fabrics that ended up being in the quilt, including the beautiful paisley border fabric, which I used as the 'jumping-off point".

When we left there, Darrell was very excited about the Freeman Ford chair so I designed my block as kind of statement about what I liked about the chair: the curve of the back going up to the crest rail.

Here is a close up of one of the blocks. It shows the four pieces that make up the block. At the top is the crest rail, the gold fabric represents the sensuous curve of the back leg as it splays out and connects to the crest rail.

Here is the chair - Greene and Greene 1908. This chair now lives in The Huntington Museum.

Darrell designed a chair after this one, also. His Aurora Chair.

The border on the quilt gave me fits. I didn't have enough of the fabric to make it all the way around, so I decided to 'make do'. I took some of the other fabric and made little blocks and used them to fill in the blank spots. I'm not real excited about it, but it turned out okay. Note to self: don't be skimpy when purchasing border fabrics!