Welcome Becki!! I am brand new to quilting as well. I started about 5 months ago (weekends only) and I must tell you just posting and joining this quilting family is a good start!! I really love "Quilting 101" A beginner's Guide to Quilting. It is very easy to understand, gives good basic information and has projects (such as potholders, table runners, quilts etc.) that are very doable and can be used for any size quilt you desire. I bought it on Amazon and it sits on my small cutting table as a reference guide for me when I get stuck with something like binding and corners! Yes those are the two things that I still have problems with... I also love magazines! Fons & Porters "Easy Quilts" is wonderful!! So if you can pick up one of those and see what you think. Anyway, welcome and I hope you drop in often and tell us how you're doing and by all means if you have questions please don't hesitate to ask. I check this forum everyday and learn so much just reading the topics. Oh, when you have time look at "quilters blogs" as well. That's my new favorite thing to do while I'm drinking my first cup of coffee before I go to work. So much help and inspiration!! Susan

Carol (re: Antique Forum)-- If you go to the top of this page, and click on "Forums" you'll get the list for all the GW forums. I visit the Knitting and Crochet and Sewing forums, too. I've just been reading a lot on the history of quilting, so this is a timely discussion for me. Here's what I've learned: At the time of the Revolutionary war, quilted bedcoverings were just beginning to come into vogue. Quilting itself had been done for centuries prior to this time, but almost exclusively for clothing--it's speculated that it started as padded clothing for wearing under armor. Most of the applique from that period was "broderie perse". This involved purchasing a length of printed chintz, then cutting the individual motifs out and appliqueing them onto a muslin, silk or wool background fabric. This allowed you to buy a relatively small piece of the printed fabric and still get a large quilt out of it. The appliqued top was then quilted, often with trapunto and other elaborate details. An out-growth of broderie perse became popular in Baltimore. Baltimore Album quilts feature very fine applique, but in the form of unique designs formed from many bits of cloth. These were often made by the friends and family members of young women as wedding gifts, especially among the wealthier families. They were also made as parting gifts for families that were leaving the area to homestead on the frontier. In other parts of the country, where this technique wasn't popular, wedding quilts would have been pieced. On the frontier, where fabric was at a premium, quilts were made from the scrap bag, using remnants left-over from clothing construction. It is very unusual to see a pioneer quilt made from just a couple of fabrics that were obviously bought just for that purpose. Some families were very serious about preparing hope chests and a young woman wasn't considered ready for marriage until she had a certain number of quilts finished and stored in her hope chest. I've heard of as many as a dozen being considered necessary by some demanding mamas. The Amish families that I know of have no requirements for quilts or hope chests, nor do their quilts look like those that we traditionally consider "Amish" with solid, bold colors. Amish quilting in the late 21st century underwent a big change as it became a lucrative source of income for families struggling to make ends meet. Modern Amish quilts tend to follow current color trends and are often made for the retail market. Amish women do make quilts for themselves, but the examples I've seen look no different than any other contemporary quilts. I think that we really begin to see quilting as a necessity slowly begin to taper off after WWI. By the late 1800s you could buy ready-made bedding that was of reasonably good quality and inexpensive from at your local department store. Mail-order companies made it possible to buy them even in remote areas. Interestingly, this is the hey-day of the crazy quilt, which is made from silks and velvets and is a silent testimony to the fact that the maker had time to spare for making a completely impractical quilt and could afford to buy expensive fabrics to have her clothing made from. It was a subtle way of showing your friends and neighbors that you were a woman of leisure. During WWI, women began to enter the workforce to fill the gaps left by the soldiers and had less time for time-consuming tasks like quilting. In the 20s, it was definitely less popular because it was seen as old-fashioned at a time when society was rushing head-long into the technological age. Women, who finally had time-saving devices like vacuum cleaners and gas and electric ovens, simply lost interest in quilting. In spite of this, it doesn't die out and a major resurgence of interest occurs during the Depression and the second world war as it was a way to both save money and provide warmth for your family. It contributed to the war effort, freeing up fabric mills to make fabric for the troops. In response, flour, sugar and feed companies made their bags from fabrics that could be used in quilts. However, after WWII, quilts takes another fall in popularity and quilts from the late 40s, 50s and 60s are very uncommon. With the Bi-centennial in 1976, interest again increased and it has been on up-swing ever since, but with major changes in techniques, style and purpose. There is no need to make quilts for your hope chest so now quilting is a labor of love or a means of personal expression. I think the best quilts are both. Annie

WOW...what a lot of work...I only wish I could see the fabrics better..as it is it's pretty hard to date any of them from the pics. Is the pink in the border figured, with a darker shade of pink on a lighter pink fabric? If so, it's known as double pink, and consistent with your date of 1880...ditto the pink and white check, if it's woven and not printed....homespun 'type' fabrics were heavily used then, so check for woven vs printing. Any printed fabrics of that era are very thin...much thinner than the homespun/woven fabrics, and these fabrics wear much worse than the others, too. Checks and stripes were usually heavier cloth, as they were also woven. Shirting prints were very popular...that is, fabrics with a white or ecru background, printed with small geometric figures or even stripes..... they were usually only of one color in the '80s...that is just blue or one other color in the small figures. Blues were of the Indigo blue type, or a very popular color at that time was a cadet blue, which is a lighter, softer blue.....and if you have printed fabrics with black figures, you should see tiny holes where the mordant used for black dyes actually destroyed the fabric with time..this is very common with any blacks before probably around 1900, when the dying process improved and harsh mordants were no longer necessary. Purples and greens were not stable at that time, either, and would be faded to browns (you can see the original color if you can look at the fabric in the seam allowances.) [I have a bonnet that appears to be grayish brown silk, but if you look in the seam allowance, where it's been protected since being made, you can see the fabric was, originally bright, bottle green!] Hope some of these tips can help you with dating your quilt...it's never wise to accept something as true (as a genealogist I can tell you from experience, that not everything passed down from other generations is always right...so often folks don't quite 'remember' things correctly), so we always need to do some sleuthing on our own..and, in this case, what fun to REALLY examine your quilt, looking for what is being "told" you by your fabrics! I think this sort of scrutiny makes us really LOOK at the fabrics, and appreciate them much more than when we only look at the whole thing, rather than the parts! Have fun!

Carol, what a treasure. It sounds fabulous. Our family quilts aren't very fancy but I'm honored to have them. One was made by my GreatGrandmother & was supposed to have been made when she was very old. It's basically a whole cloth with yellow embroidered accents. Then I have a quilt that was made by my 2 "spinster" great aunts, they were wonderful ladies & sewed almost exclusively for the menonite charities. It's a sweet but plain pinwheel. Their names were Alma & Mable. My mother said they never kept quilts as they were done in the quilting bee fashion at church. In stead of remembering their quilts I remember their beautiful garden, homemade preserves & especially their homemade tomato juice! My mother was not a quilter but definately was responsible for my love of sewing & taught many a 4-H'r to sew. Jill