Quilt Rescue

One day my Sweetie and I were about to walk down the last row of a local antique mall and found this old quilt all crumpled on the floor with a bunch of other junk.  Totally disrespected.  Stopped me in my tracks.

There was no price tag, no nothing but dust on it. 

Fabric deteriorated on several blocks but most interestingly to me, most of the little black dots in the wine-colored sashing material was eaten away exposing the batting.

 

I knew from some of my quilt history studies that meant that this was an older fabric made when black and brown dyes contained caustic substances that ate away at the fibers.

 

And then there was this wonderful “brain coral” looking fabric in this star block.

 

I fell in love with it.  I had to do an intervention with this quilt and take her home with me.  She was old, had cool fabrics in it and the blocks were stars (I love star blocks).  We took it to the front desk and asked them to call the vendor to get a price.  $35.00 and it became ours.

 

No more dirty floor for this old girl. 

 

 

The batting is pretty thick.  The quilting is Baptist Fan design in fairly fine stitches – as fine as you can get on such fat batting.

 

 

The backing is a blue chambray print.

Once she was home with me I aired her out, brushed her off, and draped her over a corner chair where no one ever sits just so I could  love and admire her cool, old fabrics.

I’m a sucker for old quilts.  That’s another reason why I like to make 19th century reproduction quilts.

I’ll show you some more of my antique/vintage quilts in future blogs.  None of them are in this bad of a shape, though.  The Hexagon Star is by far the most worn of my collection.