Vintage Quilts ~ WIP and finished

I came home from Colorado with a number of fun things that I'll be posting about over the next few days. Among them were two unfinished quilts started by my Grandma and her sister, my Great Aunt Anna. Their handwriting is similar enough that I have trouble telling them apart sometimes, but I suspect that this box of quilt pieces came from my Grandma. There are 59 rings already pieced and enough pieces for many more!


This is a pattern I'm not familiar with and if you know what it's called and how it should be put together, I'd love to know! I think that each ring looks like it gets a hexagon center and that each "flower" should then be appliqued to a base cloth similar to the way a Dresden Plate pattern would be. With 59 flowers, there might be enough for 2 quilts or certainly one very large one!


I love that the box included not only the templates used (one backed with sandpaper to hold it steady while tracing the outline!) but also a little pincushion!


The second set of quilt pieces I believe came from my G. Aunt Anna. There are 18 Dresden plate rings already pieced and enough pieces for two more rings.


These rings should make a nice double bed sized quilt. There were two large pieces of fabric in blue and pink packaged with these rings that I think were meant to be the backing, but neither looks quite right with it. I'll have to take them to the fabric store to choose a good background color.


The outer edges of all the rings are already basted to shape! I think this will be the first one that I finish!


I've finished other vintage quilts in the past. When I first expressed an interest in learning to quilt when I was in high school, Miss Jessie, an elderly friend, gave me a whole box of partially pieced quilt pieces. This Dutch tumbling stars pattern (also known as Yankee Pride I believe) was the first one I finished. Miss Jessie had pieced the blocks and I put them together and hand quilted them. It hung in our living room and then my bedroom for many years until it was lost in our house fire.


The second of Miss Jessie's quilts I finished was this Double Wedding Ring quilt. I completed the piecing, marked the quilting design and had it hand quilted at the First Presbyterian Church Sewing Circle in Boulder, Colorado (where I also learned to do hand quilting). For years, I used it as my bed cover. Amazingly, it had been put away in a cupboard that received little fire damage and so was able to be saved after our fire! I also have some pieces she cut for a smaller second double wedding ring quilt in shades of coral pink and yellow.


My Cha Cha Mary (our version of the Polish word for Aunt) also gave me the pieces to several quilts. This small log cabin quilt is the one I'm working on right now. She pieced the blocks and I arranged them and to get the diagonal stripe pattern and am hand quilting it to make a wall hanging.


The Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt that I received from Cha Cha Mary was nearly complete when I received it. It appears she ran out of the orange fabric she was using between the flowers and so the outer row down each side has yellow fabric for the borders. All I had to do was to finish adding a few blocks in each of the outer rows with pieces she already had cut. Once again, I had it hand quilted by the Sewing Circle.


This Sunbonnet Sue quilt came from my Aunt Anna just as you see. I always thought it needed something else and I could never figure out what, so this quilt top has been languishing in among my linens for some time. Looking at it now, I think small scrap flowers appliqued at the corner junctions of the squares might be just the thing!

With all these quilts to get finished up, it's time for me to dust off my quilting skills and get to work!