The Yellow String Quilt

On the eBay pictures, the quilt didn't look quite as ratty as it really was in person. The box came and I opened it quickly in anticipation of my 'clean Florida vintage quilt.' True, it was clean. The seller was proud of the fact that she'd washed it prior to putting it up for sale. 

The quilt's condition proved that washing a vintage quilt in today's washing machines might be a mistake. It certainly was in this case. The cotton batting was  gathered in small hard lumps throughout the quilt. If it hadn't been machine-quilted in straight lines all over the piece, the quilt would have come apart completely in the wash. 

The string/Log Cabin blocks are sewn in sweet pastel prints from the 1930's. Each was outlined with either soft orange strips or dark navy strips. The navy-outlined blocks were the lucky ones as the orange-outlined strips were beginning to wear through everywhere. At last count, there's 42 repairs to be made on this quilt. 

The wide yellow border on this quilt makes the composition cheerful and gets it to bed size--in this case 64" wide by 84" long. The lines of machine quilting go right across this border and the batting clumps are evident. 

I'm thinking this might be an intergenerational quilt. The navy and orange strips around the blocks, the wide yellow border and even the thin floral flannel used as backing scream 1950's. And it's confidently machine-quilted. But the pastel prints are 30s and 40s--maybe Mom's work?

Maybe someone found or inherited the vintage blocks? And then decided that they'd complete the quilt with a modern up-do. But vintage/modern don't always co-exist well as the uneven wear shows in this quilt.

It's still welcome in the collection-repairs or not. I'll just keep it safe for now.

But it's a clean quilt--as the eBay seller stressed several times. Very clean.

Festive Quilts and Change

Red, green and white are the three colors we always associate with the holidays. But the splash of cheddar in this North Carolina Rose Wreath quilts does add a tiny quirky touch. Found it last November at a local antique mall in Morehead City.

This red and white sampler quilt could certainly serve as holiday decoration but about five years ago I made it for my friend Fran Grossman whose favorite color is red. 

Come to think of it, my Mom's favorite color was also red and she made this quilt top. It's about time I got that out and finished it!

I think my all-time favorite is this North Carolina Lily. I bought this antique quilt at an auction. It's from Onslow County, N.C. January 1996-the very first year we lived in North Carolina. 

A couple of years back I bought a really neat North Carolina Lily quilt from a friend who lived in Michigan. She told me her father, an ardent junker, had found a trunk by the side of the road in Detroit and in it was this quilt! She and I both agree that this quilt was probably the work of a Southern quiltmaker and that wouldn't have been unlikely since so many Southerners moved to the Detroit area to work in the auto/airplane factories and munitions plants in World War II. I know it's not a strict red-and-green quilt but thought you might like to see it. It makes me smile every time I see it.

                                                

This year I made a red, white, yellow-green and black block for the Guild's Christmas exchange block. 

Maybe my idea of what's really Christmas colors is changing?

Change is my word of the year for 2021. The thing I missed most about 2020 and staying home to stay safe? Teaching. Meeting new people and teaching and encouraging folks to quilt is meat-and-drink for my soul. I hope we can do it again soon.

Baskets and Quilts

A  tisket, a tasket
A green and yellow basket       
I wrote a letter to my love
And on my way I dropped it
I dropped it
I dropped it
And on my way I dropped it.
A little boy he picked it up
And put it in his pocket.





OK-my basket's not green-and-yellow. It's gold with bitty yellow spots and big pink polka dots. For whatever reason, quilters love baskets. Depicted as pieced quilt designs or serving as handy storage for quilters' sewing tools, the basket is a symbol of domesticity as much as a handmade patchwork quilt.

I have a few basket quilts in my collection and have made several basket quilts myself. However, I've never made a real basket and can only admit that I am an admirer of the art of basketry. 

Showing a few vintage basket quilts now. This 1930s quilt of wool, silk, and rayon was an ebay treasure. 

Advertised as being in good condition, this quilt was actually a tattered beauty. But when I got it up on the fence to photograph, I was taken with its loopy charm. Crazy quilt + appliqued baskets! 

This 1940s Basket quilt belongs to my friend Anne Hope Marvin. She found it as an unfinished top and sewed on the pink and blue borders and hand quilted it. It's from a wide place in the road called Black Jack, North Carolina (after a tree of the same name) and so I call it Black Jack Baskets.

Black Jack Baskets inspired me to make a quilt of my own. Meet Black Jack Baby. Note: the quilt is not faded on the left. The picture was taken on a humid hotter-than-Hades day and the camera fogged up.



Baby now has a scrappy smaller sibling that is yet unquilted. 

Baskets keep coming up in my quilts, even if only a singleton in a sampler. This little quilt top is from my plaids class and the basket block was certainly the most time-intensive block to sew.

And if you put something in the basket, it's even more interesting. Here is a North Carolina Lily block in some of my favorite colors. Not quilted yet.

With times what they are, excursions to thrift stores are a treat. Obeying social distancing etc. etc. I

ventured in to a second-hand store today and came out with a basket as my prize.

Sue Williams, a master basket-maker friend, identified my thrift store basket as almost certainly hand woven from oak. Enjoy this short video about Sue and her work. She was awarded the 2019 Heritage Folklife Award from the governor of Tennessee. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHPvK7iAtPY

Seven Sisters Surprise

I'd always wanted a Seven Sisters (Seven Stars) quilt. All those little 60-degree diamonds and tiny triangles! Some quilt patterns you think you'll never make and if you're a quilt collector as well, these patterns are put on your 'bucket list.'

A little more than a month ago, I read a very average ebay description of a vintage quilt for sale. It was so boring "--old brown and green quilt--" that I'd normally never click on it. So glad I did! Up came a late 19th century Seven Sisters quilt. I watched the auction carefully and finally, at the last minute, placed a minimal bid. 'Seven' was mine! After some back-and-forth with the seller about shipping, I paid the Paypal invoice and waited.


A week later the quilt arrived in a recycled and battered box, bulging along the sides and one box seam splitting. I slit the packing tape very carefully wielding the knife sideways so as not to cut the quilt. And sure enough the quilt popped out of the box like those biscuits in a tube. The quilt hadn't been wrapped in paper or even put in a plastic garbage bag but rather just jammed in the old box and shipped. This sloppy treatment was a further clue (along with its unimaginative listing) that the quilt's seller didn't value the quilt highly.










I couldn't wait to get Seven up on the flannel design wall to take pictures! The photo revealed a slightly sun-faded area that the ebay pic had not shown and its overall condition was good rather than mint as advertised. But I still love it!

This Seven Sisters quilt has contained hexagonal blocks that finish into rectangles. Not a common method of dealing with a hexagonal block. The brown surrounding pieces also reach to touch brown squares where the teal green sashing crosses. It's a variant I haven't seen before. But the colors and the triple-bar border all scream 'Carolina.' Whether North or South I cannot say. Is the quilt actually an artifact of the Civil War? I'd say not as many of the fabrics in the patchwork date from the 1870s-1890s.



Ironically when I was putting the pictures of the Seven Sisters into a computer file, up popped two images of another Seven Sisters quilt. This is a quilt top and it is somewhere here in the shed, stored high above my head on the 8' shelf, folded with all the other vintage tops.

Excuse the crummy photos--these were taken with an ancient camera on a sunny and windy day while the quilt top hung on the clothesline. Since then I've become a somewhat more competent picture-taker. This quilt top has a different set than the new quilt. Here long bars of cheddar with tiny blue triangles keep the patchwork hexagons twirling over the surface of the quilt.

If you'd like to learn more about Seven Sisters, I'd suggest you peruse Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog.

Here http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/01/3-seven-sisters.html and again here http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/01/3-seven-sisters-posted.html . 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

The Christmas Quilt #1

Last week we cruised a local antique mall. You know, the type where many dealers set up their booths but all the check-out happens at one desk up front. The sign on the door drew me in:
           
               All Christmas on Sale! Ornaments-Trees-Quilts. 

Okay, you got me. As Rod and I walked the mall, we saw lots of neat stuff (who knew turkey platters
were such a big thing?) but not until the back room of the mall did we see any quilts. And there was a pile of them. We worked down the stack, unfolding them one at a time. On the bottom was a very flat slightly soiled quilt. As we unfolded it, I got excited. Of all the quilts we'd seen, this was the only one that was certifiably antique. And for its age, in very good shape.

Meet the Christmas Quilt. The pattern is one of those ancient variations of Rose Wreath. The blocks are about 17" square and between the blocks are white sashings 6" wide and the two border 8" wide.




The  visual kicker is what happens where the sashings intersect: neat little eight-point stars in cheddar orange against a green background.

The quilt only has two borders and while you might assume the two other borders had been cut off after some long-ago accident, the border quilting motifs and the neat red binding both look original to the piece. I think this quilt only ever had two borders--evidently the maker was after a particular size and when she achieved that, the construction of the quilt top ceased. I can relate to that.

In addition to all the applique work being accomplished in white thread (almost invisible stitches), the quilter also did a bit of reverse-applique. She cut a tiny hole in the center of her red flowers and pushed a small square of cheddar fabric down the hole and then smoothed it flat. The final step was using a small applique stitch to fold back and fasten the red fabric around the hole thus revealing an orange center for her flowers.

The hand quilting itself is of excellent quality. I measured stitches in several places on the quilt--she quilted consistently at 10-12 stitches per inch. It didn't hurt that the batting was extremely flat.

Much of the background quilting was in the 'hanging diamonds' pattern but others, especially on the borders, seemed to indicate the quilter had templates she traced around and then quilted. Often she used little hearts as filler motifs. Might that indicate the quilt was a wedding present? Being a special quilt might help explain its age and excellent condition since the quilt is about 150+ years old. A loved wedding quilt might have lived for years in a cedar chest and only be taken out for special occasions.

In the next blog posting I'll talk about and show some of the interesting quilting motifs.

Quilt Re-Folding

Ha! A mere three years between blog posts! This summer I've been going through my 20+ years' worth of quilts and sewing treasures. Everything from fabrics to UFO's to antique quilts. And this blog focuses on the vintage stuff so...my collection of quilts is, hmmm, eclectic. As I take quilts from black garbage bags where they lived between the old studio and the new shed, I re-fold and re-appreciate some of these vintage treasures.

From time to time, when I give a lecture, I have threatened to simply do it in mime and hold up quilts. Most people would be just as glad to see eye candy go past and might even stay awake through the evening too! This blog is rather like that--mostly images and a little text.

The following are the results of photographing two bags of quilts.

Now refolded, the quilts go up high in the new shed.

I use a special safety  ladder to access them.







A vintage Baby Bunting quilt from Texas, maybe from the 1940s. The maker loved her bright colors.



Some of the lavenders have completely faded but dang, that orange will last forever!

As long as the pattern has curves, I'm interested. This quilt top is from the 1850s and no, I'll never finish it. It just needed to come home with me. From the back, you can see the red print has been pieced three times and the maker's stitches are tiny and precise. From the way the seams are folded over smartly even after 150 years, am pretty sure this was made using paper templates.

One of the first antique quilts I bought. A wool and wool blends baby quilt from Pennsylvania with late 1800-early 1900s fabrics. Guess I'd call it a crazy quilt but it does begin with a square in the middle like a Log Cabin pattern. Maybe the baby was coming and she felt the need to 'get going' and finish the quilt!



This Spools quilt is from Texas and displays almost all plaids. Love this quilt. It has a sort of honesty about it. Bought in an online auction.

And this quilt is 'cat-approved' as well.

Another curved piecing quilt and this time I have no idea of its name. From an online auction.



The quiltmaker combined smooth curves with pointed pie wedges within the block--what an unusual pattern.







All for now. But I will photograph more quilts as they emerge from their bags.
                                                 

The One(s) That Got Away

So I'm an antique quilt collector. And some of my R&D involves cruising ebay and other online auctions. When I see something strange and wonderful (notice how I almost always combine those terms-) but the quilt is already too dear for me to even consider bidding, I save a picture if I can and file away in a rather large file under the heading "Interesting as seen on ebay." There will always be a few that I regret missing. 






So this is a roll call of the ones that got away, with an emphasis on the fan shape. Please note that I neither recorded the dates or who the seller was--all I wanted was the graphic memory of the long-gone quilt. if any of these quilts belong to you, I am more than willing to insert attribution so contact me.






A close-up from the Polka Dot Fan quilt as seen above. It's got to be Southern. The zippy color scheme plus the slightly wonky oversize dots makes me wonder if I could be so bold in my own quiltmaking. 








This old beauty is a wool quilt of Mennonite origin. Love this dramatic pieced pattern that falls diagonally down the quilt supported by large squares of plaids and plains. I even like the picture where it's slung casually over a wire fence!












And there's this killer fan quilt top I still dream about--from Missouri I think.

Detail of the Killer Fan. Love the skinny red shapes that tie the fans together within the block.






Finally a wonderful combination of a fan+crazy quilt. A one-of certainly. 

Blog Rewind-December 2015

Oh dear--this blog has been sadly neglected! True confessions--it's way too easy to zap over to Facebook and post a few comments or pictures rather than plan and write a blog. Maybe I over-think this thing.

                                                            So Cheryl Sleboda of Muppin.com fame, in an effort to get lazy bloggers like myself off our a--, issued a 31 day challenge to write a blog posting every day.   #31DayBlogChallenge




Not like there's anything special to do in December, right?
 .
                                    
The challenge began December 1 and lasts through the last day of the year. I am obviously a day late in starting! Cheryl challenged us to blog daily but seeing as how I write three blogs, eventually I realized that once a week for each blog would be a more realistic goal. In other words, 12 new postings. That I can handle. 





Today on December 2, it's Quilt Flap's turn. For all lovers of antique textiles and particularly quilts, feast your eyes on this 50's House quilt. I bought it off ebay for cheap (I am cheap-) and am even more delighted when it came in the mail. The pattern is uber-simple and I love the way the roof piece seems to levitate above the main house parts. The quilt was likely made in the 1960s (looking at the prints) although the seller could tell me nothing about it.

Love the orange sashing and the turquoise cornerstones! Not surprising to me that this quilt hails from Florida.








I know I'm going to graph this cool house and do something interesting with this pattern...