More Red

In the week leading to Valentine’s Day, there is red everywhere.  

A mockingbird is enjoying some holly berries in our yard.

And the nandinas are displaying lots of berries.  Yes, I know they are invasive, and they are bad for the birds, and we clear out some.  But my mother and Jim’s mother both loved their nandinas, so we don’t remove them all.  And the berries this year are big and red.

In my thoughts leading to a GBI Red project, I found these blocks that have a lot of red.  I like a focus block as a start, and sometimes an orphan block sparks an idea. The two blocks on the right are Maggie Bonanomi designs.

I have a couple of these Beligian linen tablecloths with red stripes.  I love red/white/tan as a color combination, so that leads me to see possibilities.

And, there is this.  Red and white is a tried and true combo.  And, in one of our forays through an antique mall, I found this linen tablecloth with embroidered red signatures.  I’d love to know the story behind it.  Was it used at an event like a wedding party, or a going-away party where guests signed the cloth? 

I presume Percival and Marian are husband and wife, but I don’t think they embroidered their names at the occasion.  Did they write their names on the cloth and then someone else did the stitching in red?  Some threads are heavier than others; some stitching is tight, some is loose.  So maybe more than one person did the embroidery – or one person might have varied her stitches to more accurately match the signature.

Interestingly, Jim has an ancestor named Margaret Hudson. We didn’t buy this in the area where his great-grandmother lived, but perhaps the antique dealer did…. Certainly that’s not a unique name, but to find this is quite interesting.

What will I do with this?  I’m not sure…but there’s a story there!