Dining With Mr. Jefferson

We travelled to Virginia a few months ago to visit friends, but we also made time for a few tourist stops. One of these stops was a tour of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. In the dining room, our tour guide explained that the walls were originally painted with an expensive and ostentatious chrome yellow color, and the room was recently restored to that color.

There were also some blue and white dishes on display. I didn't take photos during the tour, but here's a photo from Jane Canapini which represents my inspiration well.

I was familiar with the Something Blue fabric collection by Tilda Fabrics, so the dishes immediately brought this collection to mind. I thought combining these fabrics with a solid bright yellow could make for a fun quilt.

The first step was to find a yellow fabric that was similar to the chrome yellow paint in color. An internet search for chrome yellow turned up a suggested hex code of #FFA700; I fed this code into Steph Skardal's QuiltySolid app and found Riley Blake's Confetti Cotton in Ducky to be a good match.

I chose to go with a simple traditional pattern. 9-patches on point is a very common design, but it came to my mind thanks to an antique quilt in the collection of the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art in Tuscumbia, Alabama:

I opted for 1.5" squares in my 9-patches though, and used the yellow for the larger alternating squares while keeping white in the 9-patch backgrounds.

I used a variety of white solids, and added some blue fabrics from my stash to mix with the Tilda prints.

The backing is another Tilda print from the Something Blue collection.

I initially made a label using the name "Mr. Jefferson's Kitchen," but fortunately my wife pointed out the scene was in the dining room, and not the kitchen, before I finished sewing on the label. Then after finishing the quilt, it occurred to me there might be good title ideas in the Hamilton musical. If I had thought of it in time, this quilt might have been named "I Gotta Be in Monticello."

This quilt is not my typical style, and I'm not sure what I will do with it. With its simplicity, I don't think it is a show quilt. Still, I'm quite pleased with the colors and the resulting quilt.