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Quilts in Redwork

© Jeanne Walsh

Most of us began to sew way back when, when Grandma or Mom taught us to embroider. Actually, one of my favorite teachers taught all the girls in our country school to embroider, making tea towels for a Christmas gift for our mothers. We struggled through many a recess that November and December trying to get those stitches just right. Now you can teach your children or grandchildren how to make a small quilt or wall hanging with "redwork."

Redwork is simple embroidery of outline designs on a white square, usually muslin. The only stitches needed are the outline stitch, and maybe french knot. Since no sashings were placed between blocks on redwork quilts of old, some quilters embroidered the feather stitch on the seams.

In the 1800's expensive colored silk was the only thread available and therefore only the wealthy did embroidery. Then a red dye was developed in Turkey for cotton thread. This red thread was fairly colorfast and was relatively cheap. And "redwork" came into vogue among the common people by the late 1800's. The color was called "Turkey Red."

Redwork, or red outline embroidery, was usually done on small muslin squares (about 6 inches square) called "penny" squares. These sold for (you guessed it) a penny and had a simple design, animals, flowers, children's rhymes, household objects, printed on them for the embroidery. This fad continued into the 1920/30s when more dyes were developed in the US so that more colors were available and the red gave way to more colorful threads.

If you enjoy having examples of many techniques in your quilting, you will probably want to confine your project to dark red as an example of redwork. However many quilters use several colors in their outline designs.

"Tea Party" is a combination of piecing and embroidery. The motifs came from the book "Favorite Redwork Designs" by Betty Alderman. I traced the designs onto muslin squares slightly larger than what the final block would be to allow room to place the square in a hoop for embroidery. I like a fairly small hoop, about 6 inches across, and I use embroidery needles because of their larger eyes (Remember to take the square out of the hoop when you lay your work aside for awhile or overnight to avoid creases from the hoop.) I did some outline quilting by machine on the designs, the blocks, and the borders.

The book mentioned has some darling Sunbonnet Sue alphabet designs. These designs are not transferrable so you will need to trace them. There are several other projects in the book.

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