Vintage Quilts

I'm just finishing up a project where I repaired and quilted a couple of vintage quilts. Sandy found these tops in an old trunk and suspects that one of her relatives pieced them. They were mostly hand pieced with tobacco twine, but there is some machine piecing in the checkerboard one. The ladies at Thimble Pleasures think the star was done with fabrics from the 1950's and 60's, while the checkerboard had fabrics from the 1940's. Before we quilted them, some of the fabrics were crunchy - remember when your Mom (or Grandma or Great-Grandma) had to sprinkle fabrics with water, roll them up, and let them sit for a while before she could iron them? They were definitely like that, but after they were quilted they stayed nice and smooth! Just goes to show - you never know what treasure you might find!

This first one is quilted with Simply Feathers:

This one has a traditional Baptist Fan quilted on it. It was a favorite design for hand quilters of the time. My Mom says the arcs were marked with chalk attached to a string, and the quilter held the string at a point on the quilt to draw the arc, then the next arc was drawn incrementally using measured marks on the string. Pretty ingenious I think! Today's machine quilters have a much easier task...