Spring Cottage Sampler: The Tea Table
- Nicola
- 9 minutes ago
- 3 min read
With spring on the horizon, I'm delighted to introduce you to my new Petit FOUR pattern, the Spring Cottage Sampler, before its release on the 1st of March.
Last year Andrea - from the Willow Cottage Quilt Company - and I posted parcels of Tilda-filled loveliness to our block of the month participants, with each block taking them on a restoring ramble deep into the heart of the English countryside as we searched for the first signs of spring.
My inspiration for this quilt can be found just along the lane where I live. Spring Cottage was the beloved home of Shropshire poet and novelist Mary Webb. She spent many happy hours tucked under her veranda reflecting on the garden she'd created and the ravishing view over the Shropshire Hills. You can read more about Mary in my first post here and find out more about Mary's novels and poetry on the Mary Webb Society website.
Today, in my second post, we're dropping in to take tea at Spring Cottage...
Dippy Eggs
At this time of year it's impossible not to marvel at the very essence of spring: the gentle tilt of the earth towards the sun that triggers the annual miracle of new growth and new life. The spring equinox - which fall on the 20th of March - marks the mid-point between winter and summer and the miraculous moment when daylight triumphs over darkness. in the farmyard the hens will have started laying again, bringing the bounty of fresh eggs to the tea table, simply boiled or whisked into in cake.
The 17th of February saw the beginning of Lent, the forty days of fasting before Easter. In the UK, Mothering Sunday always falls on the middle Sunday of Lent, on the 15th of March this year. For many centuries, live-in servants and apprentices were allowed home - their only day off in the year - to visit their mothers. They would often bring welcome gifts of food and money along with their posies of flowers and in my home county of Shropshire they'd have taken her a Simnel cake, a curious concoction of fruitcake encased in a crust of almond paste and saffron pastry.
Writer Emily Steele Elliott shared the following ditty in 1867...
She who would a simnel make,
Flour and saffron first must shake,
Candy, spices, eggs must take,
Chop and pound till arms do ache :
Then must boil, and then must bake
For a crust too hard to break
When at mid-lent thou dost wake,
To thy mother bear thy cake :
She will prize it for thy sake.
Crocus Posy
After a long - and this year, wet - winter, our senses are attuned to the anticipation of spring. The spirit-lifting trill of birdsong on a cold morning, the sheer delight of spotting the first snowdrop, or watching a new bud break in the garden.
Gardeners have been tinkering with spring’s timetable for centuries. The blossoming of scientific knowledge in the C17th saw experiments to encourage early flowering that coincided with the introduction of glamourous new plants from around the world. We already knew of the autumn-flowering saffron crocus – the precious spice and dyestuff was introduced to Britain by the Romans - but their spring-flowering cousins soon stole our hearts. Along with tulips and hyacinths from the Middle East and amaryllis from Southern Africa, they joined our native daffodils and bluebells to herald spring.
Growing bulbs indoors - to encourage them to flower early - was made très à la mode by Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who filled Versailles with hundreds of hyacinths grown in special glass containers. At Spring Cottage we've planted our crocuses in a teacup.
Forget-me-not Posy
When choosing the fabric for my blocks, I imagined Mary laying the table for tea on Easter Sunday, filling a pretty vase - or a teacup! - with garden flowers, taking her favourite treasures from the china cabinet and embroidered tray cloths from the linen cupboard. I cherry-picked the daintiest springtime prints, stripes and checks from Tilda Fabric's Creating Memories collection, combining them with porcelain white and duck-egg blue background fabrics to capture the freshness of a spring day.
If you’re picking out fabric from scratch, be guided by the pattern of a beloved teacup, your favourite posy of spring flowers or perhaps a cherished snippet of vintage fabric to recall the gentler days of old.
The Spring Cottage blocks will be released on the 1st of March, both individually and collected together with their leafy setting in a PDF Pattern Book. If you prefer printed Pattern Books, they'll be available on Amazon - for delivery wherever you are - or you can pre-order them here.
In my next post I'll be sharing the blocks inspired by the birds of the farmyard who 've come to personify spring...
with love from the studio,
