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Understanding Quilt-Specific Colors: Lancaster Blue

Each of these color galleries represents a color given as a value for “Quilt-Specific Colors” in the Quilt Index Comprehensive Fields. Very specific “quilty” colors often reveal specific fabrics, a specific historical time period, or a particular quilting method. The quilts pictured in these galleries range from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s, and illustrate a wide variety of fabrics and techniques. Some quilts contain examples of more than one of these colors and thus appear in more than one gallery. In addition to these galleries, a good reference for learning more about quilt-specific colors is Eileen Jahnke Trestain’s book, Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide, 1800-1960.

Lancaster Blue
Lancaster blue, sometimes called Pennsylvania blue after Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, are a ‘double blue’ similar to double pinks in that they are composed of a fine light blue print on a slightly darker blue ground.  They were popular in quiltmaking in the same period as the double pinks, roughly 1860 to 1880.

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