When I first got into quilting about 15 years ago – or, rather, when my mom first got into quilting and found any excuse to pore over her quilt books – I was all about applique. This was in the 90s before free piecing and and the Gee’s Bend revival, so it seemed like the only way to design a quilt was to go uber-traditional/geometric, or applique.
Now that I’ve grown up a bit, I’m sort of over traditional applique with its girly, curvy florals, but I still have a soft spot for cherries:
And who wouldn’t? This quilt is by flickr user playing with brushes. There are lots of vintage prints in the scrappy sashing, which, to me, is what really makes this quilt.
I think I went off applique a few years ago because it can look so neat and antiseptic, but, here, the random look of the sashing is a wonderful contrast with the polished cherries. And there’s just the right amount of white space: enough to show off the applique, but not to the point where the whole thing looks too bleached.
I feel like I should stop gushing now, but that would do a disservice to the outer borders. Look at those outer borders! See, I don’t need to gush to communicate how great they are. I just need to draw your attention to them. Aren’t they awesome?
Man, now I’m ready to spend the whole weekend trolling Creative Commons for applique pics to post here. Can you blame me? If anything was going to reignite my passion for applique, it was this quilt.