Two old quilts......I didn't throw them away.

The one quilt at the bottom was created by mom back in the late 1950's.  I know because she has incorporated some of her 50's cloth scraps with older pieces of cloth.  She was not doing fancy work back then as it is a basic set of blocks in a pattern and it is a tied quilt with embroidery string.

The other quilt could be her's and yet it may be my grandmother's.  I did not notice until I started taking photos, that it is a crazy quilt.  There are blocks sewn together like it was to be a patterned quilt then all of a  sudden random pieces are placed in a various  design.

Both quilts are made by necessity to keep people warm in bed.  They would layer old sheets or light blankets between the top quilt layer and the bottom flannel-like material. The top quilt is layered with so many blankets that it it is heavy to carry around and it is pretty worn.  In a house where the heat is shut down at night when you go to bed, it would be a welcomed thing on the bed.

The crazy quilt is made of material that is much older than the 50's quilt.  The patterns are so different with larger flowers or even southern plantation scenes.

I am always interested in decorative design and how it was created through the years.  The above piece was probably a sugar or flour sack while other pieces like below were bought at stores who sold cloth from bolts by the yard. I would assume that a lot of the cloth is left over from shirts and dresses that were made with the material. Cloth was purchased at a dime store or a JC Penny store in Osceola, Iowa. The country stores were gone by the time I was born.

My mom loved the modern new cloth designs and somewhere in my piles of pictures I have a photo of here wearing a straight lined dress in the red polka dots.  She bought an electric Singer sewing machine in 1954 and made shirts and dresses with it besides sewing the curtains and quilt pieces.

I suspect the cloth was designed with Haley's comet as an inspiration just like glassware was during that era.

I need a bigger house to hold all of this, or at least a house with an attic.  The quilts are not great to look at but they hold a lot of history.  I really did leave these two quilts laying around on the floor in the house until I was forced to bring them home as I needed to clean the carpet.  We are bulging at the seams and I have turned a downstairs room in to a store room.

Have a great Saturday and thanks for stopping by.......