Vintage Thursdays Quilt

This is my first Vintage Thursdays post and it is a Tumbling Blocks quilt.

Stylistically this quilt looks like a 1930’s quilt with overall fan quilting and the way the tumbling blocks were sewn together makes me think it was a Mountain Mist pattern.

But it has a polyester batt which makes it no earlier than the 1960s. I have made up a story in my head that this quilt was made by a long-time quilter who had her favorite patterns, this being one of them, that she just kept making. One day, her daughter or perhaps the saleswoman at the shop where she bought batting said to her “Why don’t you try this new polyester batting?” And she did.

Unfortunately the polyester batting has not been kind to her quilt. At both ends of the quilt, the quilting stitches have been rubbed out by the polyester batting and once the quilting was gone, the batt began to rub thin the backing fabric.

When I got this quilt, the bottom was open with the batting sticking out. I decided that I had to do something to save this quilt. I noticed that the binding was pulled to the back of the quilt for a knife-edge finish. I decided to add a new binding to both ends of the quilt (not just the open end) but make the binding so wide that it would cover and protect the worn thin backing fabric.
You can see in this picture the wide piece I added and the original binding (it also shows the fan quilting very nicely.

I really like this quilt and have learnt alot from it. I have not used a polyester batt since I got this quilt (there is one still in the closet) and I now know an easy way to sew a knife-edge finish when I don’t want the binding to show. It also sparked my interest in 6-pointed star quilts.

To see more Vintage Thursdays treasures, click onhttp://anapronaday.blogspot.com/