Vintage Quilts

March has been a month for quilting old quilt tops. The first one was brought to me in January, and I finally got it quilted. 

It is quite large and is what I call the hummingbird pattern. 

Lots of feedsack type prints in this one, and pretty a much a little bit of everything as far as colors and prints.

I posted a closeup of this one when I was quilting it. 

I like it a lot. In fact, I came home and searched my 5,500 Quilt Blocks book looking for the pattern but found nothing. I haven’t been able to locate all my “Aunt Martha” books, but I thought it looked like something that could have been in one of them. Anyway, I finally broke down and did what I should have done from the beginning. I got out a pencil and a compass, and I drafted a hexagon and marked out the sections. I now have a template I can use if I get a burning desire to hand piece a quilt.

The other two were string quilts and look like they were pieced by the same person. 

The maker used every kind of fabric available including polyester double knit and tufted bedspread fabric. They both weighed a ton and were quite challenging to quilt. The one with the borders was especially awful. I texted her and told her it was going to have some tucks in the borders and maybe other places, and she said she knew they weren’t flat, and she didn’t expect perfection. That’s a good thing, because they aren’t perfect. But, they are done, thank goodness.