My Vintage Quilt Collection is Growing!

Ohhhhh! I’m so excited! In the last month or so I’ve added 6 new, well, technically old quilts to my vintage quilt collection!

Four of them I kind of inherited…. All of them I saved from Goodwill!

Some are more awesome than others, but they all were made with love by someone! And I can’t wait to show you them all!

The first set of four are the ones I ‘inherited’. Our Modern Quilt Guild got an email from a man that was about to take a bunch of family quilts to Goodwill, but decided to check with us first to see if anyone was interested. Myself and one other guild member jumped at the chance to save them from the clutches of Goodwill! My guild-mate picked up the quilts and then decided she didn’t really want any of them. And I wanted them all, so it worked out perfectly!

Once I had the quilts, I emailed the man who had them to find out more information on them It ends up that his mother and grandmother had made them. They both spent a lot of their lives in New Orleans and his mother graduated from Sophie Newcomb and then got a master’s from Tulane. My alma mater! What a small world! I love it!

The orange quilt is my most favorite of my whole new collection! I was worried I was going to have fight my guild mate for this one! Just kidding! But I’m in love with it! LOVE! It’s fantastic! It’s bright! It’s orange! It’s vintage! It’s in fantastic shape. It’s traditional, but by using the solids only it becuase a very graphic and modern feeling quilt all wrapped up in vintage love! This one was made the ‘donor’s’ mother, who was born in 1917 and lived for 94 years!

This is another very graphic and traditional one! I don’t know if the mother or grandmother made this one. I think the grandmother made this one. But the mother may have quilted it. The top fabric is very aged, but the back fabric looks a bit newer, so it looks as if someone quilted it later than the original top.

Now this one is interesting! It looks like a plain ‘ole white quilt. But, oh, no! It’s so crazy! It’s all white. yes. But it’s a bunch of little pieces of white, hand sewn together and then hand quilted! My quild-mate showed it to me and said she didn’t know if I’d be interested in it. It’s not, obviously, a very intriguing quilt design by any means… But the quirkiness of the idea of sewing together a bunch of the same colored fabric is so fascinating to me! This one was also made by the ‘donor’s’ mother.

The last of the four New Orleans quilts is this Dresden design quilt. It’s been very much loved! It’s in pretty good shape, but there are a few pieces of the dresden that are falling apart. According to my ‘donor’ this one was made by his grandmother and was the most used of the four. He said, ‘the multi-colored quilt was I believe the most used.  For many years it was on my mother’s bed.’

And then there are two more that I saved from Goodwill! These two I know nothing about. I don’t know that they are old. But I do know that they are handmade and they were both intriguing to me enough for me to bring them home!

This first one I found and loved the stars! Not so much in love with the border. I have thought about changing out the edge, but I don’t think I will. It’s kinda growing on me. It’s the quilt! I also can’t come up with a new deisgn! For this one I paid a whopping $14.00!

And lastly, the blue and green cross quilt! Another Goodwill save. I think it’s funny that these two finds both have the funky pointed edges! And why does this one not have the points on one edge? Did they get tired of making them? Is it the top that would be covered by a turned over sheet? No idea! The mystery of the find! And for this one, I paid a whole $7.00 bucks! Yep!

And that’s my new collection! What I love about it is that they all have different edges! All the other quilts in my collection have the traditional plain edges. But not this set! I’m just in love with them all! And I’m in love with the New Orleans connection in the first set!

Do you collect quilts? I love them. But I don’t have a good way to display them…. What do you do?