It can be shallow (10") or deep (20"). The quilt in question could be described as an appliqued medallion of limited colors with a fringe border. I am in awe. "Tuck" is the part of the quilt that folds under the pillows should you want your quilt to cover them. Most quilting fabric has a usable width of about 40 inches, often a bit more. Click on the picture to look around. Patterns & history from my first book on the topic. If you want to turn your quilt making hobby into a profitable business, then you’ll need to figure out just how realistic that is. Step 2: Calculate how much fabric you need for each pattern Click to see more. Medallions with a central focus were more popular before 1840 than after, but that style characteristic is not much of a clue. See Jane Gatewood's fringe on her 1795 quilt above. Looks like I'll see some of you in NH next month. First printing sold out but more on the way. Notice the four-lobed appliqued shape. Thank you, Barbara, for this wonderful post. Latest date? Challenging applique from the heart of quilt country. Not only will it ensure that you always buy enough fabric for your project, but learning how to figure it out before having to just measure the pieced quilt top can allow you to purchase… Watch Now >> If anyone on the board does this, can you tell me if you charge by time, how many pieces need replacing, size of quilt? I forgot to ask. Could be 1775. Yes to this whole blog. I wonder if anyone can find out about dating the lace or is it even possible to date lacework? Click on the detail of Nancy Phillips's Block #2 to see the pattern. Date-inscribed examples in my pictures are pieced rather than appliqued and more substantial. Click on the dog to see my Etsy shop where I still have a few OOP books for sale. In this case, a 64” x 72” quilt would need a fabric backing of 68” x 76”. Click on the cover to see more. Hope she is coming to NH next month. Tennessee to Missouri #5: Who Actually Made The Quilts? I asked if this feather with a bowknot was reverse applique but it's regular old surface applique. I agree. And now to calculate the size of the backing, we will treat it like one giant patch of your fabric. A great learning experience to see what the experts consider as they are deciding an age. Click on the newspaper pattern to read more: I'm doing online programs. Few answers. PS: It's good to know there are still quilts like this on the market. However, the few diaries that do mention a quilt by name, usually fail to describe the quilt or give any hint to what the pattern looked like (much less any type of drawing), … I'd surely like to see this one in person. Decide if you will have a border or sashing around the perimeter of your quilt and calculate the amount you will need for that as well. What a lucky and beautiful find! Notice that faded heart above. Whatever the cause the look is a clue to an early date. The overall look is rather austere. Masterpiece applique from Rose Kretsinger, Ilyse Moore and me. Can't wait to find out whym looking forward to hearing from you. The fabrics might have been imported from Europe but before 1820 we see limited variety here. There is just something about restoring well loved items to a useful state that I identify with. The overall look of the quilt: limited color scheme of white with brown and dark blue. Many times, your local quilt guild will sponsor an appraiser booth where you can make an appointment to have your quilts valued. A quilt's weaving pattern, or the way it was sewn, is a clue to age; plain weave is the most common type. If we saw Turkey red or chrome orange in there we'd be thinking after 1810 (or more like 1830), so there are no fabrics in the mystery quilt to tell us it's after 1810. Divide 40 inches by 3-7/8 inches, the size of your squares. Your labor should include time spent designing the quilt pattern. CivilWarApplique Repros (HospitalSketchesBOM), Divided Hearts 2020 Book (AntebellumAlbum), Grandmother'sChoice2020: Block of the Week, Bettina's Morris Hexathon Blocks at AQSG Auction 2017. Get this classic as an eBook. I tend to like the utilitarian aspects of o-l-d quilts. Choose a single fabric that will make up the entire back-side of your quilt … Style includes the overall color scheme (we'll get to individual fabrics later). I'd like to see/read more about that lovely pieced medallion. It looks extremely faded. Squeal! Seems odd Harriet DuBois would make her name the centerpiece of a quilt. Go to Amazon to see more. So my story right now is 1780-1825 and I'm sticking to it---at least until one of you comes up with an argument for a different date. Prepare any quilt larger than 36 inches x 36 inches for quilting by rolling it as follows. I'd like the pattern but of course, Craftsy as it was back then is no longer. Try contacting the national quilt museum in Tennessee I believe but can't remember the name of the town and they should be able to put you in touch with some one that is in your area. You can fix it. Examine the quilt. Border patterns include a flowing ribbon and a spindly zig-zag stripe. The main thing to know about fringes and other added edge treatments is that they are seen in early quilts before 1840 and rarely afterwards. Create your own floral medallion with easy to use patterns & instructions. Saris are made from 4 1/2 to 9 yards of fabric which is a lot to just throw away. We'll look at the clues to age using comparative dating, matching the undated quilt above to quilts with dates inscribed on them. Thank you for walking us through your reasoning about this one. Click here to see print-on-demand & digital editions. #1 French Rose. The fabrics are limited, probably due to scarcity. Why Block Structure Matters . Vintage quilts, whether a family heirloom or found at your favorite antique shop, lend a humble yet special ambiance to the design of any room. It does have faded star blocks and border elements. Click on the book cover to buy a downloadable version of the old black & white edition. The answer, 10.32, is the number of 3-7/8 inch cuts you can make across the width of the fabric. Just remember that these finished quilt sizes are approximate and can vary 4” – 8”. But we have plenty of good clues to indicate that this quilt is early. A few years ago, the Midnight Quilt Show with Angela Walters did a Milky Way Sawtooth Start quilt. Jelly Roll Quilt Introducing Quilt Designer Want to have fun and express your creativity? It's a good question. How to date antique fabrics and add to your stash of reproduction prints with projects for reproduction quilts. Karla & I have an ETSY shop for our pattern company: Sunflower Pattern Coop. More pink than red. Is there a significance to 1840?Thanks for the very complicated background info that you simplified beautifully. Thanks so much! in this quilt and in the border the Deborah Wilson quilt above. See Patterns for sale in my Etsy Shop. 12 Blocks.12 Tales. Click to see more. Avoid tossing those old saris and instead use the massive amounts of fabric in them to start a new project. It is beautiful. More quilts to admire/puzzle over. ISO old Craftsy quilt pattern. Anyone know? Knowing how to figure out how much backing fabric is required for a quilt is a great skill to have. Early American patchwork focused on browns and blues, probably because those were the available cottons, dyed with natural dyes such as madder and indigo. If I don't have a copy Amazon may. I've published a lot of books on quilt history and quilt patterns over the years. You also see pinks from madders. I have new copies in my Etsy shop. Fascinating. Basic measurements are included on this quilt size chart to help determine how many quilt blocks are needed to complete your project. Some we'll send through the mail; some we sell as PDFs for instant download. These may have been domestically printed cottons (or perhaps cotton & linen fibers), made in the young U.S. Prints available from American calico printers before 1820 or so tend towards rather simple block-printed designs with rather simple dyes, particularly indigo blues and browns obtained from madder. Below: A few of the patterns & books we're offering. Click on the Amazon link. Concerning the Harriet DuBois 1807. Click to see more. Not only will it ensure that you always buy enough fabric for your project, but learning how to figure it out before having to just measure the pieced quilt top can allow you to purchase all of your fabric at the same time. Click to buy a PDF to print yourself, 28 pages of patterns & pictures. Sampler Quilt to Recall the Civil War Along the Kansas/Missouri Border. Shown here is my favorite Christmas Angel. Lay the basted quilt on the floor and roll the two sides towards the center, leaving a 12-inch swath of quilt unrolled, as shown in Figure 1. Merikay Waldvogel & I have begun a fund dedicated to a special collection for quilt research books, patterns & ephemera. Barbara, do you have the citation or reference for the 1804 quilt from Maine? This is where you will begin machine quilting. Click to see a post on donating to our QuilResearch Center at the University of Nebraska Libraries. Could be 1875. That differentiation might make a difference in date. Once you can decipher a quilt block's grids, you can make it larger or smaller with ease. Both blue prints I see in the photos are possible late-18th-century fabrics: wood block figures on indigo grounds. I'm looking forward to that! This is the fabric that wraps around the outer edges of a quilt. Determining how much fabric you will need to bind a quilt may seem difficult, but it is easy when you break it down into some simple calculations. Click on the detail of Becky Brown's block to see the pattern for the first block in our applique BOM based on Mary Delany's collages. Smaller quilts (lap size or baby size) are easier to quilt on a domestic machine than larger quilts (bed size). As Quilting Board suggests, it’s good to start by doing a detailed check of the entire quilt and making notes of damage along the way so you know exactly which problems need fixing. Traditional blocks to "Unravel the History of Quilts and Slavery." About the only instance where the date can be taken as the latest feature and credible source of the quilt’s age is when the date is quilted in the quilt stitching itself on the front, as part of the overall quilt stitched pattern. Click on the happy monkey for information about the 3rd edition. Love the education aspect of this post. Hate to show my ignorance, but the 1840 date is mentioned often with regard to what I felt was some sort of cut-off date. I know that sounds strange, let me explain. Lotsa questions. There was once another color here but it's no help now. Click on Heidi's block to see the pattern. After 1820 you see a real change in fabric variety in American quilts although Mary was sticking, with the zig-zag borders. Yep, that is how it is done. Exactly how early? A BOM with 14" traditional blocks and lots of history. This great calculator will give you numbers for six different fabric shapes, from half … 1840---a real change in quilt fashion, also much more domestically produced fabric. And was some color lost from the brown fabric that frames the center? She asked if I could find out how much to charge for her work. Thank you.....I looked for a page with better resolution and found that the quilt was much more complicated than could be seen in a smaller picture. "Drop" is the part of the quilt that extends over the edge of the mattress. Figure out how many hours the quilt will take to make and multiply that by what you consider a fair wage. How kind of you to take up repairing old loved quilts, Carole! Oh my. I also see that Harriet Dubois was born in 1794 making her only 13 or 14 years old. You will just need your quilt, a ruler or measuring tape, and a calculator to figure out your fabric needs for quilt binding. Probably wood block prints rather, than cylinder prints. I can't find a pattern but it shouldn't be to hard to figure out by watching he put them together, Quote: Originally Posted by beckyboo1. Reply. The most important clues to the age of a quilt are the stiches, the fabric and the design used. Stitches Admin, layers or sheets of raw cotton or wool or of synthetic fibrous material used for lining quilts or for stuffing or packaging. Hello everyone!! I've been thinking of doing this video for a LONG time. I often get asked.....How do I price my quilts??? Quilt Block Patterns of America's Pioneers These are for quilts related to the westward migrations including a bit of history as to why they were popular with pioneer women. The fabrics are limited, probably due to scarcity. You can write down what techniques you think you’ll need to use to repair the quilt… If I am, are these faded blocks OR is the pictured work the reverse of a quilt, perhaps with red stars showing through from the other side? http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/01/zig-zag-borders.html. putting into words why I think it's older than she guessed, which was about 1840. I still have new copies of the bound books in my Etsy shop. The books are all print editions from early print runs. Hurrah for the WWW letting us see these historic textiles.....Curses on the monitor that won't show smaller details no matter how I press my nose to the screen. *To calculate the yardage needed for binding, take the perimeter of the quilt (the length of all four sides added together) + 12” (for joining start/finish tails) ÷ 42” (fabric width) x 2.5” (width of binding strips) = inches of fabric yardage required. Block of the month: Original applique patterns recalling the landscape of the westward migration. That edge treatment looks like a netted fringe (but I know. Old quilts are often given new lives and fresh beginnings. Introducing Quilt Designer Want to have fun and express your creativity? My mother was just asked to repair two old quilts. (Discharging 19th century.). She hangs in my sewing nook year round and is a reminder of the constancy of life and how no matter what happens to any of us or our things..life, love, and blessings go on! A friend of a friend recently scored big in buying this quilt. What a spectacular find! The back of your quilt should be about 3-4” larger all around than the top of the quilt. Some blocks are almost always set edge to edge. I belong to a Facebook group called "Quilts-Vintage and Antique". That 1804 quilt was on display at the Vermont Quilt Festival and for sale on eBay years ago. Quilt Size Chart . To help with this process, I have created a quick quilt size chart for easy reference. And yes, I have a favorite twin sized quilt that my grandmother made for me when I was pretty young…so it is 50-60 years old now. Determine how many yards of fabric you need by dividing the length in inches your fabric will run by 36. I think I am seeing pink stars around the center. Easy to find index with a digital search. If  we saw Turkey red or chrome orange in there we'd be thinking after 1810 (or more like 1830), so there are no fabrics in the mystery quilt to tell us it's after 1810. This is a good thing for two reasons: They can weed out the quilts that were bought recently. You'd have to be pretty old-fashioned to make a quilt in this style in 1830---so let's say a range of 1780-1825. The color palette may have been dictated by taste as much as technology and trade. Click to see in my Etsy shop. Focus is quilts and how women used them during the War for fundraising, patriotism and practical bedding. Quilting style and density and techniques can offer clues to date but in this case the quilting looks rather utilitarian. Esther Bradford's 1807 eagle applique has a knotted or netted fringe. Fusible appliqué is easier and faster than hand turned appliqué . Is that zig-zag pieced or appliqued? Quilt Calculator. If we were looking at the quilt in the cloth rather than through photos we might push that date forward due to the prints. Quilts just looked different after 1840. There are quilt names mentioned in old diaries or journals kept by the women who made quilts. Slide that back to a whole number, 10 cuts. And although the structure is important for altering the size of a quilt block, it is also a huge component when designing a quilt, because some blocks just do not mesh when sewn side-by-side, even if they are the same size. My 2020 Civil War Reproduction Quilt Book. See what Amazon has. So the take the finished size of the quilt and add twice the seam allowance to both dimensions. I don't know what colors would tend to fade away in very early quilts. Click on the picture to read the post. With this weave, warp and filler threads pass over one another in alternating rows. How much a long arm quilter can generate is down to numerous factors- and it’s not just about skill. The idea of a zig-zag border was also popular with early quilters. I will think about explaining it better. Full-color, full-sized patterns for classic applique & quilting. Notice the examples in the dated quilts on this page. Miniature quilts, which are smaller versions of big quilts, are often more difficult than their bigger counterparts because they use smaller pieces. I've mentioned the bow-knot and simple four-lobed shapes in the applique, both designs seen in the earliest American quilts. It must be remembered that fabrics, especially those used for patchwork and applique, often started their lives as other things (dresses or curtains) before becoming scraps and then part of a quilt, so they may be much older then quilt itself. Cool quilt, too. If your quilt is 80 inches by 54 inches, you will need twice the fabric, or 3 yards. Indigo blue-ground print and brown figured print, in the quilt in question. What you need to do, in this case, is either figure out a way to reduce some of your costs - either make the quilt faster, reduce the cost of materials, or cut down some of your fixed costs - or come up with a reason to get a premium price for your quilts. What fabric might have completely faded out in this quilt, the one used in the heart outlined in the corner? Finally, you will need backing for your quilt. Below are links to buy them. A guide to making reproduction quilts, choosing reproduction prints and dating fabrics. 2019 book with over 60 newspaper patterns from 1928 to 1961 and history by me. FABRICS. I usually measure the length of the quilt and add 8”, and then measure the width and add 8”. I can't tell the difference between discharged or reserved indigo prints, especially in a photo. 1830? It's a pretty reliable clue. Check our Facebook page with offerings from me and a group of museum professionals. Quilts made from blocks set this way can contain either even or odd numbers of blocks in both the rows and columns without any effect on the symmetry or balance of the quilt design. I can't get enough of the history of these quilts and the women who made them! The mystery quilt would not be any earlier than about 1775---American patchwork tends to be about as old as the U.S. itself. Could be last quarter of the 18th century (say roughly as early as 1780!). The Bryerpatch Studio recommends that you calculate the time involved in and costs of one square foot, then multiply that by the total size. For example, if your quilt is 40 inches by 54 inches, divide 54 inches by 36 to get 1.5 yards of fabric. Exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art featuring their spectacular collection with reproduction patterns. Knowing how to figure out how much backing fabric is required for a quilt is a great skill to have. The email address for this blog is MaterialCult@gmail.com. You do see pink in quilts this old. Click to see books and quilts for sale. Techniques include conventional applique, which doesn't  really help. I've been thinking a lot about early quilt styles in the U.S. so I was glad to have a puzzle to figure out. Click on the quilters to see the page. Backing Fabric. Secure the rolls with safety pins or bicycle clips. The absence of bright reds, yellows and greens is a clue of sorts. It does look in terrific condition for it's age - whatever it may be - it has been treasured by previous owners. Quilt Block Patterns from the Colonial Revival For popular quilts from the 1920s and 30s when there was a new interest in the "old fashioned" art of quilting. Figuring Yardage for Quilt Backs. Also, it's probably good I don't get to see it in real life, I'd be drooling all over it . Buy new Print-on-Demand editions or see what Amazon has below. The absence of bright reds, yellows and greens is a clue of sorts. The Connecticut quilt project found this quilt dated 1810. by Anna Ingersoll with a similar flowering ribbon border. Thank you for sharing! Single diagonal lines---absolutely no help at all. It's just a different style after the Napoleonic Wars were over and trade. 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