Earlier this year, my father showed me a box of quilts that one of his Iowa relatives sent him years ago. Of the quilts in the box, a few of them really stood out to me. Now that it's warm and dry enough for outdoor photography, I thought I would share some photos!
Let's start with my favorite one. This is a scrappy log cabin, made with light and dark value fabrics that appeared to me to be mainly from old clothes.
This quilt had the above tag pinned to it. Are you surprised this scrappy log cabin was made in 1926? I think we often forget how heavily-influenced contemporary quilting is by older styles.
Each of these blocks is about 4" across and it looked to me like the entire thing was hand pieced. I didn't measure, but the quilt appeared to be approximately the size of a contemporary Twin bed quilt.
All of the blocks had a tiny red solid center, but the blocks at the center of the quilt were pieced with more of it. The binding was made from the same red solid.
I love the colors in this quilt!
This is a smaller version of the same quilt, also made by Nan Green. According to a note that came with the box of quilts, this was intended as a baby-sized companion to the other.
The colors in this one are a little more muted, but there's still that red solid at the center of every block. This one also had a lot of a butter yellow solid, as shown above.
As you can see, this one shows some wear. I suppose this would disappoint some collectors or quilt historians, but it actually makes me happy for Nan. It means that somebody got a lot of use out of her quilt!
Both of these log cabin quilts are tied with the knot and tails on the back of the quilt (so the ties are barely visible from the front). I'm guessing this may have been common at the time these quilts were made (maybe it's common still!) but it was new to me. To me, it appeared they were tied "backwards,"
This is another hand pieced quilt, but this one was also hand quilted. It's a large bed-sized quilt made entirely in three solid colors.
Here's a closer view of the quilting and piecing. Those yellow kites and blue octagons are solid pieces, so there was clearly some complex piecing going on.
This one reminds me of a crocheted afghan! It's also bed-sized and pieced with hundreds of tiny squares set on point.
The colored rings radiate out from the center. Each color wave includes one ring of solid squares and several rings of similarly-colored prints.
Here's a close-up that shows the hand quilting. This one didn't have a tag but, based on the prints, my non-expert opinion is that it was made in the 1930's.
Here's one of the corners. I love the black around the edges of this one!
The binding was pieced around each of the on-point squares, giving a rick-rack look to the edges. That must have taken a while!
