Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Early Christmas Quilt...


Christmas came early this year.  My DH and I drove up to South Carolina to view a quilt collection that is about to go to auction.  I came home with a couple...early Christmas presents!  (makes up for my not going out shopping all Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend!)

First is a brick quilt done in columns circa 1880.  The blue sashing strips vary in width...largest to smallest differs by more than 2 inches.  Lots for wonderful indigos mixed with shirtings, and plaids.

 The binding is back to front and is sew down by machine...a bit rough on the corners but it is the earliest quilt that I own that has machine binding.  I'm thinking the maker was showing off her new machine!  The rest of the quilt appears to be hand pieced and hand quilted.

The quilting is a Baptist fan or elbow fan.  Interestingly the fans begin on each side of the quilt.  The arcs meet in the middle and the "empty" spaces are filled with parallel line quilting.  Makes you wonder if they planned this or got halfway through the quilting and went "how the heck are we going to join the two sides?!  Anyway, it works!

Worked on my embroidery a bit today.  Trying to keep calm as I have an MRI this afternoon and I hate being in those big metal tubes!  Anyway, hope to have a finished pillow to show tomorrow....

9 comments:

Sue said...

Whoo hoo. Lovely early Christmas present.

Dolly said...

I made a copy of a quilt that my mother-in-law made in the 50's, and it had the fans meeting in the middle, so I quilted mine the same way. Had no trouble blending the fans, I guess it just worked out to be the perfect size for it.

Do the blue strips vary within the length of a strip, or are there just different size strips?

Janet O. said...

Wonderful old quilt! Love the color of the sashing.
Very unique quilting pattern.
Oh, those MRIs--as if being in the tube isn't bad enough--all those noises! Hope it went well.

Impera Magna said...

What a lovely quilt! And what a wonderful early Christmas present!

Hope your MRI this afternoon is one of the "open" ones... makes a ton of difference!

Pippa Moss - Welsh Quilts said...

I went to a lecture on Southern quilts - apparently this "meeting in the middle" is fairly typical - I think that the centre was known as the "ridge". Pippa

AnnieO said...

Wonderful quilt! I like that setting a lot.

Tonya Ricucci said...

love love love it. just beautiful colors and so soft. hope the MRI went well - fingers crossed for great results.

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Merilyn said...

This is such a gorgeous simple quilt, what a great purchase! Hope all goes well with the MRI!