Nancygeddes

This was so interesting. I was at a friends house yesterday, she had a quilt that was made by her G. Aunt in 1943, it is a scrappy quilt of printed feed bags and white. Thousands of tiny hand quilted stitches. Quite lumpy. I lay you dollar to donuts that it was carded.

charsuewilson

Just talked to my dad (late 80's). He doesn't remember his mother or grandmother carding cotton or wool for batting. They were using up whatever they had lying around. The only carding being done was carding of old wool blankets to collect wool to be made into new blankets. Inside the quilt was flannel, old blankets, or old sheets. Sheets were used until it wore through. Then it was patched, and it wouldn't have been used in a quilt until the patch had worn through. Dad remembers them tying a number of quilts, which wouldn't have been consistent with carding cotton or wool for batting. I have one of their quilts and it is hand-quilted, and I remember a number of others which were hand-quilted. (They were all hand-pieced, too, although they had a sewing machine - treadle, then later electric).

The fabric for piecing the quilts was left-overs from sewing clothing, good pieces from worn-out clothing, and white fabric from worn out sheets. My grandmother was born in 1894, and great-grandmother in 1866. Dad remembers the quilting frame in the living room during the winters before the 1930's.

We have one of my husband's grandmother's quilts - a popcorn quilt. I think it's much more recent, though, because much of the fabric is crepe. It's made from squares of fabric, folded in half diagonally. Then one side of the triangle is sewn, turned right side out, stuffed with batting, sewed up. Then the triangles are whipstitched together. I'm pretty sure the batting is polyester, but this style of quilt could easily have been carded cotton, so that could have been how she learned to quilt.