Thursday, November 20, 2008

Antique quilt




The Craftsmen's guild had three antique (I'm using 'antique' in the generally accepted definition as signifying 100+ years old) quilts donated recently, and I'm trying to identify the specific pattern used on this one. It's obviously a tulip pattern of some description set on point and is hand pieced, with machine applique stems. Those are the tiniest machine stitches I've ever seen, too. Hand quilted in a Baptist fan pattern, and only one small area about 2x4 inches is missing the quilting stitches.
The green has faded a tremendous amount, based on the non-faded seam allowances, but the red shows very little change in color. The single-fold green print binding is completely worn through all the way around, but as a whole the quilt is in surprisingly good condition. The backing is maybe a homespun? So thin, with a such a loose weave, it almost looks like cheesecloth or drapery scrim at this point. There are areas of quilting where green thread was used but the vast majority of it was done with matching off-white. A couple of mends on the backing, a big round applique and a couple of smaller darned areas, but they are quilted with the original quilting so I'm assuming the fabric was repaired before being used. One pretty bad mildew-y looking spot towards the middle of it and some smaller rusty looking stains but all in all, a very pretty quilt. Total size is 78"x82".

Any information on the block pattern or fabrics or anything else about this quilt or time period would be greatly appreciated.

3 comments:

Stella said...

Looks like a variation of the Carolina lily pattern, often done in red and green.

http://www.quiltersmuse.com/north_carolina_lily_quilt_story.ht

Stella

Terry Grant said...

Yes, I also know this pattern as Carolina Lily. It looks beautiful!

carrie said...

I thought it was a Carolina Lily, too. A very pretty quilt