A New Old Quilt for Valentine's Day

It was last week when I completed the last stitch in the new binding around this restored 1880s quilt.  I've been celebrating by sleeping under it each night. Because of its wool batting, it's nice and warm.

Here's the finished quilt on the bed.  I made pillow cases out of muslin with a matching 2 inch red stripe to match.  I think I'll make another set using the green fabric.

When I first started working on this quilt many of the blocks looked like this, but this one was the worst.

So the next generation of the family knows what has happened to this quilt I printed a rather lengthy history on fabric and sewed it onto the back.  If you want to read what I said, it follows below:

Harvey Family

Red and Green Tulip Basket Quilt

85 x 102 inches

There are no family stories or oral history about this quilt, but there has been some discussion of who might be the original maker.  As a young girl I remember that this quilt was displayed on the brass bed in the bedroom on the main floor of the Harvey Cottage at Winona Lake, IN.  In the late 1960’s it was a beautiful quilt but in great need of repair.

In September of 2013 I began the task of repairing it. On January 2, 2015 I placed my last stitches in the binding. This was a labor of love.

The original white background fabric had beautiful hand stitching worth preserving, but the red and green fabrics were in terrible condition. The green had so many holes in it, I could just pinch and pull it off the quilt. I re-appliqued brand new matching red and green fabrics over each block and the outer border. 

There were numerous little holes in the white areas, both on the front and the back. I appliqued new muslin patches over these areas to give the quilt more stability. As I worked I marked the areas that needed to be re-quilted, and that was all stitched by hand. A new binding was sewn right over the original binding to protect the fragile edges. 

This quilt has now been transformed into a beautiful piece, the layout of the blocks, the hand quilting and the contrast of the fabrics is stunning. I’m glad that I was able to preserve it for future family members.

A quilt historian told me that this tulip quilt was probably made in the 1880s. I’d like to think that my Great Grandmother Nancy C. Harvey (1870-1959) sat around a quilt frame with her four sisters: Belle, Alice, Lida and Madge Culbertson, to finish it for her wedding in 1891. There were many hands that stitched on this quilt, some were the original stitchers and some probably sat on the porch to make repairs in more recent years.

Inside the quilt is wool batting and I know that they had sheep on the Culbertson Farm in southern Indiana. The wool fibers had to be carefully placed on the underside of the top to give it loft and warmth.

Ann Harvey Fahl,

Quilt artist and family historian

Happy Valentine's Day.

Taking Care of Old Quilts: A New Resource

Have you ever met Ann Wasserman, or heard her speak about quilt history or restoration?  She has more experience in working with old quilts than anyone I know! She has been restoring them for 30 years.  What a coincidence that she should publish her book, at the same time I am restoring my red and green tulip quilt!

This is the cover of Ann's book.

Ask your local quilt shop to order it for you, or better yet, have Ann sign one for you by ordering it at
http://www.annquilts.com/book.html. 

This book is packed with ideas and photos of how to preserve a quilt. You will learn from an expert.  There are 106 pages, a color cover, and some color pages within. She mentions that when restoring a quilt, do as little as possible! Ann has done an extremely thorough job in giving the reader many options on how to handle repairs. The illustrations and photos are carefully detailed so her techniques are easy to understand. 

 Here are some of the topics she includes in the book:

• Supplies, basics and fabrics
• Types of stitches, many illustrations on how to make them
• Varieties of holes, tears, and slits (who knew there were so many different sizes and shapes?)
• How and why to repair, patch, applique, reverse applique (how to tackle the tricky ones)
• Hand, machine work
• Cleaning, washing, spot cleaning, why not, drying flat
• Display
• Storing
• Musty odors
• Record keeping
• Supplier list
• Bibliography 

The above list is brief, the book includes too many subjects to mention here.  You will see that she has found all of these issues in her historic restorations and knows just how to handle them.  If you want to work with old quilts and textiles, this book is a must read for you. Put this on your Christmas list.

Ann Fahl