I found and an old quilt top in an antique shop today….. you know, my heart beats a little faster when I find something like this….

It’s double bed size and a traditional star quilt pattern which was popular in the 1830’s

It’s never been used of course because it isn’t quilted… it probably sat in someones cedar chest waiting to be finished.

I guess we all have quilts like that.

This one has the wonderful pink that I have dated to 1880. It’s really interesting, It’s a madder print, the little white dot is an acid resist and the dark part of the print is produced by a covering cylinder. (The covering cylinder was engraved with the small detailed designs and printed over the top)
The fabric is called a ‘double pink.’

It also has the lime yellow and of course a lot of madder brown print fabrics as well.

It has been completely pieced by hand.

Did you ever think child… how much piecin’ a quilt’s like livin’ a life?
And as for sermons, why, they ain’t no better sermon to me than a patchwork quilt, and the doctrines is right there a heap plainr’n they are in the catechism.

Aunt Jane “in Eliza Calvert Hall, Aunt Jane of Kentucky (1907)