Carolina Lily Re-created is one of my favorite quilts and one of the most challenging that I have made.  In 1994 Quilter’s Newsletter hosted a Quilt Challenge entitled:  Salute to Quiltmakers of the Past. At that time, the magazine headquarters was in Golden, CO and we lived in Denver.  The finalists’ quilts would be shown, first in the offices of the magazine, then in Houston at the International Quilt Festival and then travel throughout the United States sponsored by RJR Fashion Fabrics. The requirement for the challenge was that half of the fabric must be from the Smithsonian Collection by RJR that was very popular at the time. 

I was gifted a Carolina Lily quilt that came from my Scots-Irish grandmother.  She lived her whole life in the South Carolina Upstate.  This quilt was well loved and was calling to me to re-create it.  I decided to do a smaller version, mainly because I had a deadline and it just had to be hand-quilted.  It never occurred to me to machine quilt it.  I was very surprised to see that the majority of the quilts in the challenge were machine quilted!

Constructing the Carolina Lily from a 10” square to a 6” square was much more challenging than I anticipated but was well worth it in the end.

The original 74” x 78” quilt was quilted in a Baptist Fan design which is very common in the Scots-Irish early quilts. I estimate that this quilt dates to early 1900s. The red sashing is a tiny red check.  The lilies have turned brown but the original color was a solid red.  The other fabrics used are solid cotton.

My Recreated Lilies are all sewn with tiny prints from the Smithsonian Collection.  The only solid cotton is the background fabric. It measures 42” x 48”.