102 year old antique crazy quilt top
Holy Cow!! is all I can say. My DH coworker was digging around in her attic through one of the many cedar chests she has inherited and found this treasure. All I can say my quilty friends is somehow label and date your work. Can you imagine how tickled the maker would be to know so many will ooh and aaah over her unfinished top over a century later.
This is how we know it is 102 years old
[ATTACH=CONFIG]578373[/ATTACH] The owner doesn't know who CBO is. As you can see some of the silks are badly deteriorated.
The whole quilt
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It is on a queen size bed and covers the entire top of the mattress.
It was foundation pieced on all manner of fabrics. Looks like shirting, scraps of upholstery fabric, pillow ticking, muslin, all kinds of different things. In this shot on the gray you can see the foundation stitches peeking out from behind the embroidered herringbone stitches
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A close up of the mind blowingly even herringbone stitches and more of some badly deteriorated silk. Only certain colors are like this.
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Other silks are ok but still quite fragile and quite surprising. Like this silk plaid print.
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The maker got creative with some oddly shaped scraps
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Many of the velvets are like new, not faded or crushed or in any way 102 years old!
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The edge was whip stitched to hold it together until it could be finished.
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She was wondering if there was anyway to preserve this quilt so she could hang it in her bedroom. I think the silks are way to fragile and could not take the heat of putting a fusible on the back. I could put it on the longarm with batting and backing. But how to quilt it?? I know some of the silks are beyond help, others are so brittle the needle would crumble them. Some are still in good enough shape I could reinforce them with quilting. I think I will recommend she get it appraised before we do anything. She may not care and just want to enjoy it and the only way she can do that is to finish it in some way. What a treasure. I so thankful she let my DH bring it home so I could marvel at it. I hope you all (virtually) enjoy it as well.