I've got more motivation to want to finish the quilt that's in the frame right now:



I went antiquing yesterday and I found this. (Sorry the picture is a bit blurred; I was standing on an overstuffed chair to take it). It's 1930s-1940s fabrics (the prints are mostly from feed sacks) pieced in the bow tie pattern. It's just about double-bed sized (72" by 84") and it was $35.

There are a couple of worn places on the pink and one on one of the feed sack patches, but I have a reproduction pink almost exactly the same color that I can use as patches. I'm thinking of doing them reverse-applique style, so the patch is under the original quilt.

Then I want to hand-quilt it. I was so excited that I even went to the quilt shop and bought my backing (also a 1930s repro fabric; it's turquoise with pink flowers) right then.

Here are some closeups of the fabrics. They have that wonderful, not-caring-what-colors-conventionally-go-together ethos of the feed sack fabrics:



This is why I bought turquoise backing.



Orange and turquoise together! Who does THAT these days?



And here's some green.

It's interesting how they're arranged - in long stripes along the quilt. The fabrics are not mixed up like I would do if I were sewing the blocks together. I wonder why the needleworker did it that way - did she (I think it's a safe assumption it was a she even though a few men made quilts in those days) think it looked better? Or did she piece them together as she got a few blocks done, and never knew how much fabric she'd have available of each color? In a couple of places, the bow-ties are made with one fabric for the "knot" and another for the "tie" - was that a design choice or a matter of necessity?

I wonder who the person was who pieced it. Was she a farmwife, sewing a few blocks in between other chores (the blocks are all hand sewn, and set together by hand, with small neat running stitches). Was she an older woman, semi-retired, using her time to create? Was she a mother, who pieced the blocks in the evening while her children slept - or while the family listened to the radio?

And I wonder why it was never finished. Did she not like the combination of colors once it was done? (I find that hard to accept; that someone would reject a useful item simply because it was not as beautiful as it might be). Did she pass away before she could quilt it? Did her family grow up and leave, reducing the need for lots of warm bedding? Was it perhaps intended to be a wedding present for a marriage that never happened?

I will never know who made the quilt. There was no provenance attached to it, and the person who sold it to me did not know anything about it beyond recognizing that the fabrics were mostly feedsacks. I think that's sort of sad - I'd have liked to have known who made it and where (I'm guessing somewhere in North Texas, simply because that's where I bought it, but you never know). I wonder if the maker pointed out the particular sacks she wanted at the feed store to her husband or whoever was lifting the sacks of feed down, or if she took what happened to come home with feed in it? Did some of the sacks make dresses for her daughters - or aprons for her?

I like to think - if it's not too presumptuous of me - that by finishing this quilt and (gently!) using it, I am honoring the memory of that unknown woman and the many hours she spent piecing a top. When it takes me months to piece a top on the machine, I can only be humbled by thinking of the patience of a woman who pieced an entire top by hand, and then never got to use the completed quilt.