I’m halfway to my work event and am spending the night at a friend’s house near Columbus, OH. As she was pointing out my bedroom and sundry this evening, she took me into a spare room to pick out a pillow (she had quite a selection!) and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a gorgeous antique quilt on the bed! She had planned on showing it to me anyway, as she knows I’m a quilter, but I don’t think she expected me to then spend the next 10 minutes or so fondling it, pointing out to her the difficulty of particular techniques, and snapping pictures!
I introduce to you her great-grandmother’s absolutely gorgeous Dahlia quilt. I’m guessing something like early 1920s—she thinks it may be in the 1910s given when her great-grandmother lives. (Apparently her great-grandmother died at age 51 of a heart-attack—tragic.) I’ve strongly encouraged her to get it appraised for insurance purposes, but also so she can hear the story of the fabric, pattern, and time period that I was so fascinated by why I had my family quilts done.
Check out the border and what it must’ve meant for binding! And be sure to take a gander at the beautiful hand-quilting!
Because I’m on my iPad and in a hurry to go to bed (another long day’s drive tomorrow segueing directly into meetings), I’m just sort of dumping these pics up there. Sorry if it freaks out your blog readers!
Gorgeous colors! The lighting makes it a little yellow but you can still get the beautiful color combo.
Look at this corner! I mean, Shut the Front Door!
Here’s the border close-up. I pulled a part of it up onto the bed to show it better. The room was small so I couldn’t get a good shot of the whole border. The binding has frayed significantly—I told her she could have that repaired if she wanted to but I actually sort of like it with the original. Shows it’s well-loved.
And a really poorly lit picture of the hand-quilting. There were so many beautiful spots I couldn’t decide where to get the picture and I could’ve easily taken about 10 more detail shots but, you know, bedtime and all that.
I love seeing beautiful antique family quilts. I don’t see myself ever collecting/buying those that I don’t know, but seeing them in their natural habitat, with family history attached, is just lovely.
Now I’ll sleep well and dream pretty quilty thoughts...