Recently I was asked by a new customer to finish some older quilt tops. These tops were made by my customer’s mother, who was born in the late 1800’s and passed in the early 1970’s! My customer herself being in her 90’s and wanted these finished to give to her children.
Along the way many lessons were learned on these tops and many surprises were found, including the choices of fabrics used. Apparently there were no cotton purists in earlier years, you used what you had on hand. In most cases I find that to make the tops even more charming, the one exception being the red vinyl raincoat fabric used as a border in one of the quilts.
The tops were small, as tops were back then. The customer brought fabric (I have no idea how old it was) that she wanted the quilts to be made larger with by adding plain borders. The backings are the same fabric. The only new fabric is the blue borders in one quilt, as there just wasn’t quite enough of the brown check to do all 4 quilts.
Several pictures follow, so I’ll make them all thumbnails and you can click on any you choose to see larger. The quilting is simple, overall pantographs, well suited to the quilts.
