Are you ready for an adventure? Because today I'll be setting out to introduce my new Petit FOUR sampler patterns, the Northern Lights blocks, which are sailing into the shop next week.
For the past year Andrea from the Willow Cottage Quilt Company and I have been posting out deliciously curated parcels to our fearless block of the month explorers and taking them on a magical journey to the edge of the world, where stormy seas meet starry skies...
A cherished part of our block of the month programmes is a special blog post, where I pass on tips for making the blocks and share my inspiration for their design. Now, whilst I had lots of fun investigating Nordic flora, fauna and folklore, there's only so much I can tell you about stars without making myself look foolish, so I knew I'd have to come up with something a little bit special for those posts. And my unexpected research find was a C15th Venetian merchant, called Pietro Querini.
So settle back and let me tell you a story...
Star of the Sea
In the autumn of 1431 a Venetian merchant set sail from the Kingdom of Candia. Better known to us now as the island of Crete, in those days it was a possession of Venice, the fabled city quite literally built on water with the proceeds of trading exotic spices, luxurious silks and precious stones from the far off lands of Asia. Our merchant, Pietro Querini, was bound for Flanders with a crew of 68 and a full hold.
Mapping was still in its infancy so, although he endeavoured to chart a course that followed the coastline, Captain Querini would have relied on celestial navigation to guide his ship in the open waters of the Atlantic. He calculated the ship’s position by measuring the angle of the sun or the North Star above the horizon with a quadrant, an instrument perfected by Arab astronomers. When poor weather obscured his view of the celestial bodies, he relied on the ingenious compass invented by the Chinese to chart his course.
But as Captain Querini headed north towards the English Channel the weather worsened: violent storms tore at the sails of his heavily laden ship, damaging the mast beyond repair. And as the storm raged on, he lost his bearing and the ship began to drift…
A PDF Pattern for the Star of the Sea block is available here
Lodestar
We left our intrepid traveller, Captain Querini, battling to save his crew and his ship in a raging storm that had set them adrift in the North Atlantic. The men took to the ship’s two lifeboats and Querini watched in horror as the smaller boat disappeared, never to be seen again. The remaining crew drifted northwards into the terrifying darkness of the Polar night.
Medieval maps populated unknown lands and seas with dragons and mythical sea monsters. Although the Vikings had voyaged across the Atlantic to settle Iceland and explore Greenland, Columbus was yet to make his famous voyage to ‘the new world’. Querini and his dwindling company of men were swept on the tide into the unknown and spent three harrowing weeks without sight of land until - in the first days of 1432 - their ship grounded on the rocky shores of a mysterious snow-covered island.
They were stranded on the remote Norwegian island of Røst, named after the old Norse word for maelstrom as, just a few miles north, the fearsome Moskstraumen whirlpool separated Røst from the Lofoten Islands. It would surely have dashed their boat to pieces. Just sixteen men out of the original 68 survived but, at last, their luck had changed…
A PDF Pattern for the Lodestar block is available here
North Star
Captain Querini and his small band of survivors found themselves stranded at the very edge of the world, in a land of perpetual night. Sheltering under the remains of their boat, they melted snow to drink, fished by moonlight and wondered what the curious lights in the sky foretold.
As the days passed they were overjoyed to see the sun return, shining for a little longer each day until, at the end of January, they saw a boat silhouetted on the horizon. Their ordeal was over. Their rescuers - a local fisherman and his sons – took them home to be cared for by his family. Living simply in turf-roofed houses and relying on the bounty of the sea, Røst’s fishing community shared generously with the survivors. Querini’s men, in turn, were enchanted by the honest beauty of their lives. And they fell in love with their food: in particular, the curious Tørrfisk, or stockfish – cod, wind dried and cured in the cold, salty air – which sustained the community through the winter.
Ever the trader, Captain Querini recognised just how useful the long-lasting stockfish would be on sea voyages. So as summer approached and the men were strong enough to make the journey home to Venice, he took a consignment of Tørrfisk with him, instigating a trading relationship which endures to this day...
A PDF Pattern for the North Star block is available here
You can find all of the Northern Lights blocks collected together, along with their marvellous Maelstrom setting, in the PDF Pattern Book here. If you'd prefer a printed Pattern Book, they'll be heading to the shop - and Amazon - next week!
In my next Northern Lights post we'll be exploring the stormy seas with the resilient fishermen of Norway's Lofoten Islands, so grab your sou'westers!
Nicola xx
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