Grandmother Quilts, Part 2

Here are a few more of the quilts from my husband's family, as promised.

This Grandmother's Flower Garden is probably pretty modern because I think it has some cotton-poly blends, but we're not sure who made it. It is hand pieced and hand quilted. Ten years ago I would have called it an ugly quilt, but I guess my tastes have changed (matured?) because I think it is quite charming.



Around here this yellow quilt is usually called Star of Bethlehem. This is also hand pieced and hand quilted. I hope that if you click on the picture you can see some of the quilting detail. It's interesting because the quilting has many different motifs that appear without any apparent plan all over the plain blocks. It is very closely quilted. I keep picturing this set up on a frame and several people working on it.




The eight-pointed stars surrounded by blocks called Hands All Around is one of my favorites of all of them. Unfortunately it looks like this took a hit from some bleach in the center. It has a lot of wear, and many of the individual blocks are damaged. The sashing is a gray check material. It was hand-pieced and hand quilted with diagonal lines about an inch apart all the way across, even through the pieced blocks. Some of the backgrounds of the blocks were made with feed sack material because you can still see the faint pink from the labels. The red, pink, and blue fabric is the same throughout the quilt, so this wasn't a scrap quilt. I find it interesting that the blue material looks a lot like the reproduction indigo fabric I'm using to make my blue and white quilt. The back is definitely feed sack because it is still possible to see the whole label, although I can't quite make out what the label says.


These two block patterns are some of my favorites. I'm in the process of piecing some eight-pointed star blocks just like these! I tried the Hands All Around block a couple of years ago, but couldn't make one that would lie flat. Maybe I'll give it another try, now that I have some inspiration.

I hope you're not too bored looking at these. I find antique quilts fascinating, and these are doubly so because of the family connection. And there's more. I'll put up some more pictures later on.

Its been a busy week. School is out early next week and there are about a million things to do before the doors close for the summer, so I haven't had much time for posting and I am very behind in my blog reading. I hope to get all caught up when summer vacation starts next week.