The Gammage Cup

Have you ever wondered what inspires quilt designs? Sometimes it's a fabric or collection of fabrics. Sometimes it's our pets or children. Sometimes it's nature at her finest beauty. And sometimes it's just something wierd.

This week, I had the dubious honor of undergoing one of our society's initiation rites into the Past 50 Club: a colonoscopy. Those of you who have already suffered this pleasure know that it's a 2-day ordeal, at best. I had it figured that I wouldn't get any work done the day of the procedure, but I'd planned to get my taxes done the day before. Oh, how naive! When I realized that I'd be sitting on a porcelain seat, not an office chair, all day, I decided to make the best of a yucky situation and pulled one of my all-time favorite children's novels from the shelf, The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall.


It's been years since I'd last read this book, so I lost myself in it despite my uncomfortable setting. First published in 1959, it was a Caldecott Honor Book way back then. It's always puzzled me why this book hasn't been more popular through the years. Although the story lacks the complexity of Harry Potter books or the Hobbit, it has a simple, witty charm that I find delightful. The theme (as I see it) is a fairly universal and timeless one, that of finding the courage to stand up to peer pressure and be yourself, and allow others to be who they are.


As I lost myself in the land of the Minnipins, and fell in love with Muggles and Gummy and even Mingy once again, I decided that I'd try to translate this wonderful story into a quilt when I'd recovered. So yesterday afternoon (I slept all morning!) I sketched and figured out measurements and began cutting, and today I sewed up a prototype block of a Minnipin cottage. In the beginning of the story, all Minnipin cottages are white-washed and have thatched roofs, and all are supposed to have green doors. I chose to make the walls of my cottage from 1" (finished) white-on-white strips to make it look like clapboard siding. As in most fantasies, electricity doesn't exist in this story. The minnipins use candles and reed-lamps for illumination, so I chose a yellow-with-white fabric for my windows. The door is green, of course. Most of the cottage is pieced, but I chose fusible applique for the thatched roof. The finished cottage is 10" x 10", a bit larger than I was originally planning, but the perfect size for my Wee Folk (applique patterns) who can easily be turned into Minnipins.


Not bad for my first cottage, but I see a few things I want to change. I'm going to move the second-floor window up a notch, and make the thatched roof a bit wider. The soft-yellow windows look nice up close, but in the scan they blend in too much with the white walls, so I might need to find a more intense yellow to create more contrast. I can't wait to finish my taxes so I can build my next cottage!