Vintage Quilts

I finally have a place set up so I can take photographs of my quilts hanging up.

This quilt was made from decorating fabric samples with several prints in different colors ways. It has feather stitching between the blocks, a gold backing, no batting. It is quite heavy! I tried sleeping under it during this past brutally cold winter and was too warm! It was an eBay find about 15 years ago.

Print in three color ways; a fourth is elsewhere on the quilt

feather stitching

Add caption

About seven years ago my dad was driving around and saw a trunk along the road. He put it in the back of his truck. When he opened it he found this Carolina Lily quilt inside! It is very primitive, poorly constructed and quilted, and heavy. But it has a great vibrancy and joy. The fabrics appear to be late 70s/early 90s.



That orange fabric is amazing. Some fabrics could have been from clothing, shirts or light weight pants.

I wrote about buying four quilts from the Royal Oak Flea Market last year. A man had a table piled with quilts taken from an empty East Side Detroit house. The owner had passed on and her family gave him permission to take what he wanted. He was selling the quilts for $35-45.

This Trip Around the World has a small red and white check print used in the border. It is all made by hand.

Another quilt by the same maker is this large masterpiece. People walking by smirked at the bright yellow border.

This is how I found the last two quilts above, piled up on an outdoor table. I bought four quilts total, including the red and white print one in the center of the table. It was a wholecloth quilt with a Christmas bell border that I discovered had an 1880s quilt used as batting! You can see pics of what was inside at: http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/03/flea-market-finds-week-two.html

Mid-Century American Colonial Decorating Fabrics Quilt

About 12 years ago I found this quilt on eBay. It has a pieced top made of decorating fabrics from the 1950s and  1960s. Feather stitch embroidery outlines each patch. It is not lined. It weighs a ton! But it was cheap and I loved those prints everyone had when I grew up.

Revolutionary soldiers can be found

Lots of old signs, eagles, a wooden "Indian". Early American history re imagined for the Mad Men age!

Warm oranges and browns and cool turquoise and olive green predominates. Some prints have red, white & blue.

Vintage Grandma Moses style print decorating fabrics are still found for sale on eBay. I love this maple sugar gathering print.

Even the floral fabrics are in the same color palettes of colors, turquoise, blue, orange and brown.

In 1957 we moved to the largest apartment in our family home that housed three families. My cousins had lived in there until they bought a house. We moved in afterwards. The walls had a brown floral wallpaper. The wainscoting was painted brown. Mom bought a nylon couch in turquoise, with a matching chair in a brown and cream print and a solid brown chair. They lasted forever! We had the brown chair in the early 1970s. That color scheme is very familiar to me!

Around 1958 Mom redecorated with more turquoise. Dad built the wood cornices.

When my husband went off to college in 1968 his mom made him a quilt, one of her first. It includes some decorating fabrics that she had in her stash.

I wish I had a picture of the early 1960s turquoise and white pop-up camper my dad bought and gave us in the 1990s. The curtains were in a brown/gold/orange barkcloth American Revolution print. So cool! The electric system blew out and we gave the camper away after many years of use.