Antique Signature Quilt Completed (WIP 1939-2015)

Happy Friday! This week I have possibly the oldest WIP I will ever finish to show you, begun in 1939.  I first posted about this quilt on a WIP Wednesday a week or so ago.  A friend of my parents have had this quilt top in their family and asked me to finish it into a quilt. 

The quilt is made from signature blocks and a few 9 patches. The information my friend had on it is that the signature blocks were made by the female family and friends of her inlaws at their wedding shower in 1939. 

The bride's maiden name began with M and the groom's last name with V, so many of the ladies on the blocks have those initials.

The blocks are hand sewn and the embroidery on the signatures is gorgeous! I'm curious if anyone can identify the age of the fabric in the 9-patches. They look more modern to my completely untrained eye and I wonder if the blocks were just a stack of blocks for a few decades until someone else tried to assemble them. Interestingly, the green plaid sashing is the only thing that was machine sewn.

I mentioned in my previous post that this top did not lay remotely flat. The blocks appear to have been not square to begin with and the sashing made it worse, which is another thing that makes me think that the sashing was not added by the same ladies who made the original blocks.  I had the option of removing the green plaid and resashing the blocks, but whoever put it there was part of this quilt's story and I didn't want to take that away.

Variegated color thread on a few of the signatures. Did they have that in the 30s?

To cope with the not-flat-ness I took small (and some not-so-small) tucks throughout the top. I first hand sewed them, then quilted them down. As a quilter it kind of makes my teeth hurt to do it, but my parents literally could not find them until I pointed it out, and even then couldn't really tell anything was wrong.

You can see the largest fold in the picture above. Notice how the horizontal sashing gets narrower toward the edge of the quilt, that's because it's being lost in a fold. I took a close up of that same fold below so you can see what the edge actually looks like.

Since most of the fabrics in the blocks were small, bright florals I chose a similar fabric for the back.

The finished quilt is still not quite square, it's sort of mildly trapezoidal, but it's within acceptable limits. It does lay flat and the edges are straight, those are my triumphs ;)

My friend wants to be able to pass this quilt down to her children and grandchildren.  Since we are going for longevity in an already old top I put a light interfacing under the entire top. This also made it washable (delicate cycle) and it definitely did need a bath.

I am (I think) at least the 3rd generation of quilter to work on this project and it's a honor to be the one to finally finish it so this family can continue to enjoy it.  For posterity I have listed the names on the signature blocks below, if any of these stitchers are still alive they would have to be nearly 100! 

• Lillian M.
• Janet A.
• Mama
• Elizabeth M.
• Wilbis?V.  (could possibly be Willis or Wilba, hard to read)
• Vivian M.
• Francis F.
• Bobby V.
• Merrell V.
• Loraine F.
• Maurine V.
• Ila B.
• Loree V.
• Letha F.
• Harley Jo M.
• Aunt Addie A.
• Waunice M.
• Grace M.
• Kitty B.
• Maud V.

 This is one of my favorite things about quilting, the way it reaches across generations. Here's hoping this quilt lives on and has more stories to tell!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Friday.

WIP Wednesday: Quilting an Antique

After over a week away on vacation and work I'm finally back at the sewing machine! I decided it's time to finish up this old quilt top I agreed to quilt up for a friend. I'm not sure if this is exactly old enough to be antique, but it is old.

Signature blocks made for the wedding of my friends' parents or grandparents... I can't remember which. I am going to have to get all the details so I can put it on the label. For some reason the top was never made in to a quilt and the family has been passing down the top ever since.

One reason the quilt was never finished may have been the poor construction. Talk about not lying flat! Oi vey.  The best thing to do would have been to tear the whole thing apart, square the blocks, and use new sashing. However, I wasn't quite up for that level of involvement and I didn't want to take that much away from the original quilt. If I tried to make some of these blocks square there wouldn't be much left of them! Instead I am just carefully pleating the winkles in the sashing wherever they appear and quilting them down.  It actually looks good, the busy plaid sashing helps to camouflage the pleats and I think after a gently wash/dry they will be hard to even find.

I love the old fashioned names! Whoever did the embroidery had gorgeous stitching. I am using a FMQ spiral to quilt the top pretty heavily in order to reinforce the old fabrics. It's a big quilt so this is going to take a while!

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.