Wow, those are really beautiful. I love the way you did that swag.

Sandra these are beautiful! I cannot choose a favorite. Yes I can - the blue-and-white. No, the pjs. But I really like the Dresden too. They are all gorgeous! No, I think the blue-and-white is my favorite.
Adding a sashing is a great idea, especially if the blocks are not all the same size.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share them with us!
Do you hand quilt them all !?!
BlueBars

Thank you for posting those....you have inspired me! I think I'll finish all three quilt tops now. I believe my great grandmother would be pleased!

Cindy

Those are ALL just gorgeous. How nice that they found their way to you!

Sandra - they are all beautiful, and exactly what I would expect from you. I love seeing all your work and I know the women who pieced these blocks would enjoy the final results.
Mary

They are just wonderful. I'm inspired to do more. Thanks for sharing.
Linda

Gorgeous,gorgeous,and gorgeous.Love them all but the blue and white is my very favorite.
TFS
Kathi

I love them all and can't wait to see what you do with the scrappy on white with the "what was she thinking" borders! Thanks for sharing these!
Teresa

Cyndy, I KNOW your grandmother would be tickled pink to have you take over her quilts and finish them. When I'm working on mine I always think about the unknown ladies who made mine, wonder who they were and what their lives were like....and, hope they're pleased that their quilts FINALLY get finished! When I first started buying them I thought that they must have died before they could finish, but as I became a quilter myself, I realized that lots and lots of tops just get stuck away, when the quilter wants to start another!
BlueBars...yes, I hand quilt everything, although I did do a couple 'cheaters' and tied them...I've got such a backlog that I needed to get some DONE, and our daughter's fiance asked that his be tied (dear, boy!!...got a break, there!)

I love the idea of someone finishing long forgotten quilts. I hope the UFO's I leave behind one day will fall into a future quilters hands and have the chance to be so lovingly cared for.

Foxy.

They are so lovely! Where do you find them all? It's a wonderful idea to finish them and at last give them the life that they were intended for in the beginning. The indigo and white one is my favorite, too; and the faded pink one right below it, and then the Dresden Plate also appeal to me a lot. What a great stroke to find the same pink fabric to put around the pink one!

By the way, DH and I once visited an old lady in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido who raised indigo plants, made dye from them, and dyed threads that she then wove into fabrics. She had several looms upstairs in an old barn and lots of bolts of gorgeous fabrics more like a store than a stash. There was a bolt of dusky orange woolen that I craved....but she didn't want to sell anything.

Anyway, about the indigo: This was a very unusual old lady, who had traveled a long distance to a warmer part of Japan and with difficulty persuaded someone to part with some of their plants or seeds and teach her how to cultivate and use them. This difficulty was very much in the Japanese crafts tradition, and she said it was only her perseverance, her age, and the fact that she had traveled so far that won out over the indigo maker's reluctance.

Everyone said that indigo wouldn't grow well in a cold climate, but she somehow succeeded in doing it, and we felt that in her mind that was the crowning achievement of her life.

Interestingly, making the dye seems to have involved fermentation, which, as I recall, she said could be very smelly. The Japanese cotton summer kimonos called "yukata" traditionally used patterns of white and indigo, and there is also a traditional kind of embroidery (called "saskiko," I think) in which you make very precisely sized and placed heavy white running stitches on a background of indigo cotton. (What impressed me was the way you are supposed to make all the stitches come together exactly the same distance from the points where lines cross.) I always thought I'd try doing sashiko some time, but quilting caught me first!

I didn't mean to hijack your thread, Sandra, but this is the story of how I came to have a greater appreciation of indigo, so perhaps it has some relevance.

Biwako, I didn't know anything about the growing of indigo, but it was traditionally grown in our American south. During the bicentennial of our country my family and I belonged to a group that was dedicated to reproducing life during the American Revolution, and we recreated it as exactly as we could, men, women and children. This was when my great 'awareness'of Women and their roll in history came about....and, along with this came my abiding interest in textiles, which were a big part in the lives of women at that time. My husband has several personas, and one required a blue jacket....to do this as authentically as I could (I hand made all our clothing), I decided to 'vat' indigo, which is a VERY long, time consuming process, involving, among other things, sulphuric acid (if memory serves, thats the kindand you're right...it smells to high heavens)....the dying was done in the fabric, not the finished coat, so we were dealing with a long piece of yard goods, and we did it in the back yard, over an open fire and in a large pot...hot work.....and when done, the plan was to drape it over the clothesline, to dry. Using a big stick my husband got it out of the pot and slung it over the clothesline....in the process, he slung a bunch of the liquid onto the side of the house. For YEARS we had indigo stains...in fact, till we resided! Doing this sort of thing gave me a great appreciation for the women who went before us....life was hard and they are much to be respected for their role in the creation of our country.
My husband and I travel a lot, and always antique wherever we go.....so, I run into a lot of quilt tops and bits and pieces in antique shops and flea markets. Keep your eyes open for baskets and boxes of fabric jumbles...go through them...there are often tops stuck in these under the table sort of places. They're often very reasonably priced, too...I don't think I've ever paid more than about $25.00 for one, although they do seem to be going up in price, like everything else, I reckon. Keep in mind, too, that some be cheaper because of unattractive borders, or even sashing.... and, you can change those. I generally don't take them apart, but simply cover parts I don't like with new fabric. Removing stitching and resewing in the same area will weaken the old fabric....

Wasn't there a tradition for young women to make so many tops for a hope chest, and leave them unquilted until marriage? And people didn't always live as long as we do today. Maybe that's part of why there are many tops left unquilted. Some tops I've found won't lie flat (complex piecing, lone stars which mound up in the center) or are simply unfinished (missing the last border, ran out of fabric, etc.)
BlueBars

I've never heard that one....I always found that girls would fill their 'hope chest' with the linens needed to 'set up housekeeping'.....sheets, quilts, blankets, towels, pillow and bolster shams, feather ticks, etc...the idea was to go to their new home with finished products that they could use, immediately, and the idea of going with just quilt tops wouldn't fit that picture....
I think, probably, some women of yesterday were a lot like some of today. They liked the piecing but not the quilting, so, after completing a top they simply went on to another top, for the fun of piecing....and, never 'caught up' with getting their all their tops turned into quilts.

Sandra, beautiful work, how do you find the time. It is satisfying to complete someone's unfinished projects isn't it.

Cindy, Sandra is an excellent source for information on period appropriate quiting. She is a wealth of information.

Bluebars, young girls did once make needlework samplers, quilt tops, crocheted/knitted doilies,bed linens, and clothing to show their homemaking skills and to have to decorate their new homes. My grandmother said single girls weren't allowed at the quilting bees where most of the actual quilting was done which may explain why they were quilted after marriage. (of course she got married at 14 so there wouldn't have been much time for piecing before marriage)

beverly

Though I don't know the true explanation, I can think of another reason why girls might not have quilted the tops until they married. I have a hope chest passed down in the family--not an antique yet--and keep bed linens and things in it, and there wouldn't be much space in it for finished quilts, especially if one were to fill it full enough of other linens to stock a house. I guessing, maybe 2~3 not too fat quilts at most. Then again, perhaps some men made huge hope chests for their womenfolk.

Here I started out to say something about Sandra's comments on indigo and got side-tracked by later posts. That was funny about the poor house. Funny to read years later, but I'm sure it wasn't for you at the time. I was glad to have my memory confirmed that the lady said making the dye creates an awful stink. She may even have told us why but I forgot the name of the chemical because it was in Japanese. I wonder how far north indigo was grown in this country.
Thanks for the tips on finding old blocks and tops. Maybe I'll have success myself some day. Trouble is, DH isn't into flea markets and antique sales. (Brightening up) but I do go to estate sales and yard sales by myself!

What people commonly think of as a 'hope chest'....lots are those cedar chest sort of things....are VERY modern inventions...probably in the 1940s....the chests of another era are very different, and it generally depends on what timeframe you're speaking of, what size you'll find, but all are fairly good sized. In earlier times, were no closets, and few chests of drawers, so clothing items were hung on pegs or folded and placed in chests. People did not have the huge amount of clothing that we do today, so it was relatively easy to put all your clothes in a chest/trunk. Various cultures, such as the Germanic ones, often decorated these wonderful chests with folk painting, and many were made for a 'bride to be' by her father. They would certainly be large enough to put all her clothes, and most of the linens that would be sufficient to get her started in her new household...everything she brought with her into the marriage. I have several of these trunks/chests...
this is the front of one of them, with wood graining, etc

I've put a yard stick on the top to show you the size....the top and sides of this one are painted with folksey flowers,and, believe me, large enough to put all the clothing and linens of a bride.

Sandra, just beautiful, both quilts and chests. My favorite quilt is the 3rd one where you foudn the identical pink fabric to make a border.

Mine is, indeed, a cedar chest and belonged to an aunt that died around 1937, when she herself was in her mid-thirties, so it must date to the thirties, or maybe up to a decade earlier. My grandmother and mother never said when my aunt got it. Possibly in the early thirties, because she married "late"!
I get your point that many of the old hope chests were big enough to hold all the linens. Are there any records showing how many quilts a young woman might prepare for her hope chest? These things are fascinating, but we may never know unless some old letters or the like show up...or have they already?

Sandra, the quilts are wonderful. I still love the dresden plate most--that black and red sets off the fabric so well, and is so unexpected.

Cheryl

There was no proscribed # of quilts for a girl to have.....this, as with so many other aspects of life would depend on her socio-economic situation and even geographic location. A family with little means would require all the children to work...to do their part for the family welfare, so those girls would simply not have the means or the time to prepare an elaborate dowry of linens. A girl from a comfortable family would be much more likely to have the means and the time to work on hers, and would 'add' fancier things like samplers (to use to help her when she marked all her linens), while a wealthy girl would spend her time, not on mundane household linens, but fancywork, to show her 'abilities'. As late as the late 1800s, this sort of thing was the case. My own grandmother, born in 1880, attended 'finishing school' where she learned to do fancy needlework, play the piano, paint china,etc - all considered 'ladylike' things to do. Her sister, my great aunt, wanted to go to teachers college and their father said absolutely 'NO"! So, she 'finished', and was given a wonderful string of pearls as her graduation gift, as all the sisters received from their father. My grandmother was married by this time, so her sister moved in with my grandparents, sold her pearls and used the money to go to college! What a woman! The 'moral' of the story is, I guess, each family was different, in what they could or would provide.