Grapes Symbolic of the Blood of Christ

Elly Sienkiewicz’ lexicon, order xenical online uk, is a self-published book (1980) that is now out of print and hard to find. Featured is a list of botanical and floral images for which Elly provides traditional meanings. Grapes can represent the blood of Christ, as believed present in the Eucharist, and green grape leaves can symbolize the promise of renewed hope (in the Risen Christ).

12″ quilt block made by Patricia Cummings in 1992, from the pattern design provided in order xenical online uk

An interesting thing happened when I re-created the antique (Swale) Grapevine Wreath block design in Elly’s book. When I washed the block with its 120 tiny grapes, the hand-dyed purple fabrics discharged color, leaving “shading” on the white background. This calls to mind the symbolic meaning of the grapes.

Block made by “Elynore,” who was born in January 1923.

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To see a whole view of this , see the quilt for sale on Ruby Lane, by seller “french72.”

This week, a woman wrote to me asking about the “value” of an unfinished, appliquéd quilt block that was made by her late mother-in-law. The only other information provided was that she had belonged to the Church of the Nazarene, except that on four unfinished blocks, the lines have all been drawn in pencil. Could this be an original design?

Since posting the photo on the front page of our website, I have heard from a reader who sent along information about a four block quilt called “Flowers and Grapes,” in the descriptive details supplied by the International Quilt Study Center for the 82″ x 82″ quilt in their collection, donated by Ardis and Robert James. The person who wrote to me owns an example of this same ornate block design, thought to have been made in the 1860-1880 era.

Isolated block of a quilt that has been documented as “Grapes and Flowers.”

To see the IQSC example, “Google” their site and enter the i.d. number: 1997.007.0378, into their database search engine.

After posting the initial file about this topic, we heard from Barbara Burnham, member of the Baltimore Appliqué Society. She sent two images.

Of these Barbara says, order xenical online uk by Dena Katzenberg, when the Lovely Lane quilts were on loan to Baltimore Museum of Art in 1981. In 2005, Lovely Lane Museum held an exhibit and offered a pattern set of selected blocks from four Baltimore Album quilts, drafted by the Baltimore Applique Society. It was wonderful to see the quilts up close. This is the center block of the Lipscomb quilt, and an extreme closeup including the fully-stuffed shaded grapes, and truly amazing buttonhole applique,order xenical online uk, and embroidered tendrils, all done in coordinating colors of wool thread.

The American Alliance for the Quilt’s “Quilt Index” brings up three pages of quilts with grapes if the word “grape” is keyed into their search index. .

Hope you enjoyed this file!

Patricia Cummings

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.