Vintage Thursday Thingie: quilt blocks

I thought I would share what I call my "study collection" of vintage blocks and bits of quilts. Today I'm sharing the older part of my collection from around the turn of the last century, c.1900. All of these were purchased or given to me by Rose Gallo (antiques and quilts) in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.




You can learn a surprising amount of information from how quilts were constructed to patterns of wear on quilts and fabrics when you have bits and pieces like these.




This first photo is of a piece of a quilt, one side includes the binding (top side here). I love how the quilter used half blocks to get the quilt to be the size she wanted! Here's a close-up of the damaged spot. You can see how the batting bunched. (No, I didn't open this, it came this way: with a window to the insides-all secrets revealed!) This photo also shows best the true colors.

Here you can see the how the binding has been created by folding over the backing fabric. Though this binding method is not used alot today, I have seen it on many older quilts .

You can also see in this closeup the quilting pattern: outline quilting around the trianges.This probably helped contribute to the clumbing of the batting as there was no quilting to hold the batting in place-which is why today most cotton batts are needlepunched. (Batts in 1900 required either 1/4"-1/2" quilting or the furthest apart, 2")

These are a collection of loose blocks.

Frugal...do you think you are frugal when quilting? Check out this lady! Here she pieced a bit on the brown fabric to make her piece big enough-hence the double line next to the seam.

Here she pieced a little triangle of fabric to the brown...look how beautifully she matched the pattern.

I've always wondered if I have these blocks because when setting the quilt she found she had enough blocks and didn't use these because of the extra piecing.

Here you can see some of the damage that these blocks have sustained over the years. This and the others had been sewn to other blocks but I see no signs of quilting...was this in an unquilted summer spread?

Hope you enjoyed seeing my "study collection". Personally, I love looking at these fabrics-that brown is just too wonderful! Next week, I'll show my 1930s bits and pieces.

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