Vintage Quilts Present Challenges

  Everyone loves an antique quilt...except perhaps the person who has to decide how to quilt a very old, very thin, hand-pieced, out of square quilt top!  Okay, I am only kind of kidding on that.  I do love and appreciate antique quilts.  So often, they come to me in pretty good shape, but they do require extra careful handling.  I love it when they have lots of white space, and the owner lets me just "do whatever will make it pretty."  The Dresden plate quilt at the top uses fabrics from the 30's through probably the 50's.  The background fabric is flour sacks.  It was in great shape, and was really pretty square.  The customer who brought it to me had cleaned it and pressed it very carefully.  It was fun to work on, both of us were very pleased with the results. 
  The Lone Star quilt is really not that old.  I would guess that it is from the early 70's because it is very much like others that I have seen from that era.  What made it special was that the young girl who brought it to me had gotten it from among her late grandmother's belongings.  It was not at all square, and some of the hand-pieced seams were only about 1/8 of an inch.  I had to tread carefully.  I was so excited to work some magic in the 18 inch square corners.  Those big expanses of white fabric just screamed for some fun custom work.  Because the quilt wasn't a true "antique" I didn't feel that I needed to worry about trying to fit the quilting to the time period.  I took some serious tucks in the setting triangles, but they were not noticeable at all once I quilted the feathers and pebbles in those triangles.  I chose a solid red for the binding to match the center star, and most people would never know that the binding fabric was purchased at least 30+ years after the rest of the quilt was finished.  I was excited about the result, and the young woman was thrilled with it.  Knowing that I helped create a keepsake for her, and for her future children, made the time I spent well worth it!