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.

very cool!! imagine 102 years ago it was made. that was a lot of work to do without a sewing machine

What a stunning piece of history!!

what a treasure that is... thanks for sharing

fantastic. she probably dated it when she was done, so it can be older. I start things and when i'm done, I date it then. this quilt is amazing. I love old quilts and crazy quilt. this is stunning for it's age!

What a treasure!

A gorgeous quilt. If I was 102 years old I wouldn't look so good either.

Amazing! What about using a tulle over the entire top and carefully stitching along the seams (maybe not all) with a monopoly thread ? Just to hold the tulle secure?

Wonderful. Please let us know when you figure out what is going to happen to the quilt. It's amazing. I am pretty sure that if I were 102 years that I would have quite a few worn out parts. For sure it's a treasure. Thanks for sharing. BrendaK

Such an interesting find!!!!

What an amazing find!

That is beautiful. I have an 18" x 18" square of the same type of quilt I am trying to get my dh to frame for me.

This quilt is lovely and understand why she wants to preserve it. You are so lucky to see it in person. The colors look so rich in the pictures. I have been reading about the 1718 quilt and quilt preservation. Often tulle is used to support the fabrics. From a distance you do not see the tulle.

What a great find! Yes, you are correct about always labeling and dating our quilts!

A beautiful treasure!

Wow! that is a beauty. Someone did a lot of beautiful stitching on that quilt. It definitely needs to be preserved some way. Lucky lady to have such a treasure. Thanks for sharing!

I, too, thought of using tulle that is hand stitched to secure. Thanks so much for allowing us to see this beautiful work of art.

I would frame it! Beautiful!

Oh maybe a quilt museum would love to have this. Lovely.

What a wonderful find! Thank you for sharing it with us.

Beautiful! Can the owner go back to ancestor records & maybe see if anyone in the family has the C.B.O. initials. Perhaps those are the initials of the maker before she married into the family (maiden name). I'd try to do research on this one for sure.

Beautiful quilt!! I can't see any circumstance where machine quilting something this old and fragile would be appropriate. If she doesn't want to have it repaired, maybe just attach a backing so she can hang it as is. Crazy quilts were usually tied, not quilted.

Such an amazing find. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing! It is fun to see what others have done in the past.

I agree with ptquilts. The leaded silk is so fragile that it would just disintegrate with any pressure on it. I would baste tulle over the pieces that are shredded and put a back on it. The hanging sleeve would have to be the with of the quilt to make sure that there is equal pressure. I bet this quilt is heavy. Be sure that there is a label that details what was done to this top. Also if it is going to be hung, it should be kept out of sunlight.

I see that you are from NY. I am in a quilt guild in WNY that is attached to an Heritage village and we have a certified appraiser in our guild. Also we reproduce vintage quilts for the village. My suggestion would be, before you do anything reconstructive to the quilt you might want to have it appraised and find out what could be done to reinforce the quilt without losing it's historic value. Just a thought.

Awesome find

I wouldn't do a thing to it until I found out at a quilt museum. They take very good care with white gloves
on and non-acid things to touch it and don't want to ruin it further. Just my opinion.

Thanks so much for sharing this historical quilt! Awesome handiwork and beautiful quilt!

Wow! I have a similar quilt. Mine is lap size. The maker used a variety of stitches and the backing is silk. It is not labeled with a date. The only clue I have to its ago is that it was given to me around 1985 by a lady who at that time was about 65 years old and she remembers being covered with it when she was a small child.

I would agree with Oma about hand tied. Certainly not machine quilting. That quilt would have been tied when it was finished in 1915.

The suggestion to use tulle on the front to reinforce the fragile pieces is great! I do that when I fix old quilts for people.

I, too, have a silk crazy quilt made by my great-grandmother in 1935. And it is also deteriorating. So I'm look for suggestions to either repair and/or preserve it. I thought about replacing the really bad pieces with pieces from DH's ties and blind stitching them in up close to the embroidery stitch. My GGM used lots of different stitches along the pieces and I don't want to lose that handwork. Amd ideas/suggestions? TIA

How exciting to find it and what a beauty it still is!

The quilt is amazing

What a great find! See it raising so many questions. You just want to know more about the circumstances and the maker.

Did the owner get it appraised? what did you do if anything to restore it?

unbelievable! What an awesome find!!