A couple that got away.....

Here`s a couple of bordered quilts that I spotted but didn`t manage to get. This one is from eBay. Black diamonds and wide black borders and rather uniform prints make this quite a subtle quilt.
 

The backing fabrics are more exciting though, great jazzy patterns there and I love the red fabric separating the strips!

This is the most sophisticated version of this type of quilt that I have seen yet. The piecing is of a high standard as is the blending of fabrics. I love the coppery border around the central diamond.

The other side is equally as gorgeous with a slightly different colour scheme.

Some of the wonderful fabrics used.

This quilt was for sale in a mid Wales antiques shop but for a lot of money. I had to pass on it.


Pity.

Another Black and Patterned Quilt

I bought this quilt last year at a large Welsh antiques fair. It is fairly basic in design and rather crudely constructed. And boy, is it heavy!

The familiar black borders in a range of fabric weights with stamps in a few places.

 Here`s one near the edge. You can get a feel of the rough nature of the contruction and the quilting from this photo.

 Another stamp. This fabric has a more luxurious finish but is still quite a low quality material. 

Some of the patterned materials look like furnishing fabric; 

 This fabric is lighter in construction, but the Tulip pattern is quite large and could be quite overwhelming for a dress. It does have a rather 1930`s feel to it.



Here a rather pretty floral sprigged cotton appears in three different colour combinations ;

This is a 'quilt within a quilt'. The filling is an older and very worn quilt. Parts of it can be seen where the fabric has been torn and in some places the new fabric is so thin that the fabric of the old quilt can clearly been seen through it.

Pink sprigged fabric visible through a tear.

You could almost tell what the older quilt looks like, it shows so clearly through this very fine and worn piece of cloth. The brown lines are two braided lengths of cord. I have no idea what they are doing there.

The quilting is very crude as can be expected with the quilter having to push her needle through at least five seperate layers of fabric.  It is also difficult to make out but does appear to be Welsh in style with clear spirals;

...and what would seem to be a central circular design in the Diamond.

The back unfortunately seems to have been replaced at some point and now consists of a single piece of floral fabric. It`s possible that the quilting was done at this time.

It is a 'rough and ready' quilt but shows the thrifty nature of the original quilter who was reusing and recycling long before we did.

Although I`ll bet her fingers were sore after quilting that!

Kalidoscope Quilt

This is the quilt I am working on at present. Inspired by a similar quilt in Quilts of Illusion.

This has been a bit of a long term project, started in the Spring, got taken on holiday with me in Summer and put to one side several times!

It is the only quilt that I have ever done any kind of colour planning on.

The original quilt used a combination of sea greens, slate blues, beiges and soft pinks. I chose orangy reds, sea blues and greens  and reddish shades of purple. 

I was a bit worried that the secondary patterns that appear on the original quilt and make it so interesting weren't appearing in mine.  But I can see a few of the larger circles now. Only time will tell if it will be as interesting a quilt as the original.

Quilts of Illusion

I picked up this interesting book a few months ago when I was in Hay-On-Wye. Written by Laura Fisher, it dates from 1988 and was published by Blandford. I can recommend a search on Amazon for a copy!

It has many well known optical illusion patterns like Log Cabin and Tumbling Blocks but also a few that are less familiar. This Cross pattern made from a combination of Tumbling Block pieces and hexagons.

This is another variation on the Tumbling Blocks which I think is very effective. I love the older fabric in this quilt.

The Pattern almost disappears in this quilt. Again some wonderful old fabrics. 

And this is the one which inspired the quilt top I am working on at present. I have completed all the blocks and am starting to piece the quilt together. I`ll post some pictures of it soon.

I also found yet more Black Border Quilts and I`ll post them too.

More Black Border Quilts

This is a quilt I`ve had for quite a few years. It wasn`t bought at the same time as the two quilt tops but I believe from the same place. It`s a bit smaller than the others and the only one with any obvious quilting.

I say quilting.......

Possibly 'running wild with the sewing machine' would be a better description.

.

Managed to get some of the lines to meet!



I`m not sure if this quilting is actually contemporary with the rest of the quilt or if someone else decided that it`s a quilt, it must have quilting.

Again, the black material shows the same mix of dull and satin, plain and textured.

Can anyone else help with dating the patterned fabrics? I thought they had a 1920`s to 1930`s feel to them but I would welcome any help. I can take more shots of the fabrics and publish them soon.

Duh!

The quilts would look even more like each other if I had remembered to post the picture of the new quilt back!

New quilt

I recently bought this very striking quilt on eBay.  The design seemed to be very similar to a pair of quilt tops that I bought several years ago.

Quilt top bought several  years ago



Second quilt top bought at the same time

 When I had a chance to examine the new quilt closely,  I could see that there were also similarities in the style of the materials as well.

The quilts seem to be constructed from light weight dress fabrics, I`m not sure of the dates but they look 1920`s in style to me. Could anyone else  help with dates?



The black material that forms such a bold part of the design is also unusual. Some of it has a satin sheen, some is patterned and on each of the pieces there are stamped marks present on the fabric....


Stamped mark (rather faded) on the quilt





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Stamped mark on quilt top

I had thought that the quilter had used old wartime blackout material, but it does seem very flimsy and I don`t think that it would be very effective at all.

I also have another, smaller quilt which is very similar and I will try to post pictures when I find it.

Are the quilts all made by the same quilter, maybe someone working in the garment industry using up scraps of fabric?  Or was there a fashion for this style of quilt at the time?