What's the flap about quilts?

A few like-minded friends are starting this blog to see and hear more about antique quilts. We collect them and treasure them. Sometimes they're old and ratty and the smell makes you sneeze. Other times you find a mint-condition quilt that's been tucked away in a trunk for the last half-century! You never know. Lynn Gorges from New Bern and I decided quilt fanciers in this area (coastal eastern North Carolina) needed a reason to get together and have a big show and tell session. We called the idea a "quilt flap." This blog seems like a good place to start. In the future we want to hold a confab, a meeting here on the coast, where all "quilt flappers" could get together and ooh and ah over each other's quilts. We're thinking mid-summer, around June 21st.

I'll kick it off with one of my most interesting quilts, (detail upper left) sniffed out at an antique shop. The quilt had been on display for less than 48 hours. When I saw it, I turned red, then white, and my husband Rod said, "Breathe, Pepper, breathe," as we hauled the quilt down from the wall --it was tucked in one of those silly display rings-- and I ran to the register. The pattern looks to be some home-grown version of Mariner's Compass. I love the great folk-y hearts and spade shapes appliqued between the spokes of the wheel. And the colors! My favorite shade of Prussian blue, oxblood brown, and of course, the golden-orange collectors call cheddar.