Old Quilts and Accomplishments

I just love old quilts! How about you? I love quilts period! I’m just not a blanket gal at all! Yep I like the quilts. They make you feel soooo cozy in bed with their weight.

So when I found this one at the thrift store this year I could not turn it down even though it wasn’t the size of my beds. I figure we can use it in the living room as a throw. It has cotton in it and since my family did upholstery in Alabama for about 50 years now I knew I could not pass it up because of the cotton and because it WAS A QUILT. (grin)

When I was a kid my Daddy, Uncle Mark, and my Pawpaw, Tom as he was called, worked in the upholstery shop. I used to dearly love going in it when I was a kid. They had this huge huge piece of equipment that cleaned and fluffed the cotton. There was cotton all over everything even the roof. It was all over and looked like snow. So this old quilt was just for me because it brings back great memories of my childhood. It’s not the prettiest quilt in the world but I do love it. It is in need of a little repair and TLC which I will get to one day. I can’t help but wonder who made it.

Like I said it is filled with real cotton and the edges are really messed up and the cotton is coming out. I want to put a new band around it but I don’t want to use new fabric so I’ve been on the look out for some old solid color fabric to put on it.

You can see the edge of it on this next photo and the cotton.

This next quilt was made by my MawMaw, my Daddy’s Momma. She made quite a few quilts in her days. Mostly made out of need to have something to cover up with. I think she must have ran out of fabric on this one because the last row of squares are different than the others. She had an old peddle type Singer sewing machine but it was always out on the porch which had a bathroom built onto one side of it. They had closed in the porch to make the bathroom. The house was really old and I dearly loved it to! She always kept the sewing machine in the bathroom.

My MawMaw used the things from the upholstery shop most of the time to make all her quilts with. They used something called ticking to make the mattresses with. She used that to fill this one with for the inside liner. She didn’t hand quilt it but she DID hand sew all the pieces together. It’s coming all apart and I am working on fixing it back. So I have pens all in it to hold the pieces in place. She didn’t have a design in mind I don’t think other than rows and bands in between the rows. She just tied the back, front and the inside liner together with ties to hold it altogether and then put the band on the outer edges.

As a child we had one she gave us to slept under. I have that one to although it IS falling apart and I do mean bad. I wont ever part with it though and have tried to think of a way I could use it but can’t bare to cut it apart. Is that not the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard of? It’s falling apart and has holes all in it but I can’t make myself cut it up to make something from it.

On the next pic you can see all my pens. It’s like this in loads of places. I even thought about taking it apart from the little bands on each row of squares and sewing it back together with the sewing machine but again I can’t bring myself to do that. I wanted it as close to the way my MawMaw made it as I can get it. I’m even hand sewing it all back together. I dearly loved that woman to pieces! Someone must have given her these scrapes for her quilts because all I ever remember her sewing was quilts and these weren’t upholstery fabrics.

In this next photo you can see the ticking they used at the upholstery shop to make the mattresses with, and again more straight pens. I have misplaced 2 of my blocks and I sure hope I can find them!

 

I promised another blogger I would share my quilt with her so that’s another reason I wanted to make this post. She had also found a quilt and I think hers was found at a garage sale and she got hers free. Mine was about a 1.00 at the thrift store. That was the first quilt I showed you.

I also wanted to tell you that I had a good day today and got some of the things on my “to do” list done. I had two old table clothes that needed re-hemming. One I just bought this spring at the thrift store and it was a Christmas table cloth and was surged along the edges but the serge was coming off. SO I surged it again. Then I had an old gold one that I’d found a few years back also at the thrift store. It was a square one and I have an oval shape table. So I made it into an oval shape and then surged the edges. I had enough extra that I had cut off it to make 4 small napkins to match.

Then I also hemmed all hubby’s pants. Yep got that done to. So I feel a little better about getting those few things done anyway. I also got the bedspread out to get started on that to.

I will probably share Christmas photo’s at Christmas time so I will share the table cloth then.

 

I hope you enjoyed seeing my old quilts.

Rose