A QUILT A DAY

I have decided to show you one of my antique quilts every day for a few days, ( I only have a few.) Does anyone know if there is a name to this quilt block? I have checked several quilt block encyclopedias and cannot find it. But look at it close, this woman must have been a math genius. All those parallelogram...and hand sewn.

As you can see, the woman had quite a lot of the red plaid fabric which I believe to have been a rare thing...unless it was a dress with a pretty large skirt which was cut up, or she had money and could afford yardage.The yellow/orange has retained it's color really well.

This block is different where the woman ran out of the red plaid, either because she didn't buy or have enough, or after time went on she ran out and the store didn't have any more of that color. Either way, it makes it interesting to surmise what happened.

Here, she ran out of the solid orange and the plaid and had to mix several orange-like colors; I like this lady....when I run out of a fabric, I try to use what I have. (Like we all don't have a stash of colors that would probably work in our quilts?)

Do you see the little black specks? They are anchors like the red ones, however the black ink has eaten holes into the white background. That tells you what some of those old inks were like

All of the white background pieces are different for each block. I like to wonder whose old shirt was cut up for this quilt? Granddad's, or her husband's?

I have always liked scrappy quilts and still do to this day. I love all the different fabrics they used. I love that the women used what they had.

Look at this cute little print. Could it have been a little summer dress?

I bought this quilt when I was in New Jersey with my sister Tracy 11 years ago. She flew from California and met me in New York where we spent one day and night in the city, we then drove to New Jersey to a book signing by Nancy Lindemeyer who was the Editor of the Victoria magazine for 10 years. Nancy had written little stories for the back page in the magazine under the name of Jenny Walton who was her grandmother. After Nancy left the magazine, she compiled those stories into a book called, Jenny Watson's Packing for a Woman's Journey, and was having a book signing at a small book shop in a little town called Belvidere, NJ. The book signing took all of 10 minutes. But I got to meet Nancy and spend time in Belvidere...so quaint!

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The city park had wonderful old houses on all 4 streets. The man who donated the land for the park stipulated that it must always remain a park. We went on a fun walking tour of some of the houses, and there was a yard sale in the park that day where we bought old china and I bought this quilt. The lady selling the quilts had A LOT! Her husband said she couldn't buy anymore antique quilts until she got rid of some and she did NOT want to part with it. I told her in my most sincere voice that I would love the quilt and take care of it. I thought she might cry. She did say the quilt was from Pennsylvania, but that is all I know about it, except I only paid $70.00 for it and I know that was a good price!

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It was a wonderful trip, one of my most favorites of all the places I have been. It was in the early fall and we drove around back country roads and found incredible old buildings to take pictures of, a country store with all kinds of wonderful things to buy, and a quilt shop called, Aardvarks... who names their quilt shop Aardvarks? We asked the woman why, her answer was because she wanted it first in the phone book...now that is thinking!! Then we stayed in an old B&B just outside of town.

I made a new binding from muslin because the old binding was all but gone and the rest of the quilt was in good shape.. . . . . . enough rambling...stay tuned tomorrow for more.