Saturday, June 27, 2015

I Crossed Paths with a Feathered Star.....

Last month I had the pleasure of coming across an old quilt quite unexpectedly.

My friend Annie and I volunteer at the local Borst House once a month on tour days. We dress up in our period clothing and sit and quilt in the parlor of the home which was built in the early 1860's.  We talk with the visitors and tell them about the house and about quilting.  This is us last year.


It's really a wonderful house and has so much Lewis County History tied up in it.  You can read about it here if you'd like.

In May, another volunteer told us about a quilt  she had found on a bed upstairs underneath a 1930's Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.  She said it looked older and wondered what we'd think about taking a look.

So we did.  This is what we found!

15 Feathered Star blocks alternating with 15 plain blocks,
bordered with triangles, and finished with cornerstones & partial blocks.
It appears to be from the mid-1800's.





Here are a couple of the blocks up close.
Such a treasury of fabric prints!





The border and cornerstones.



This quilt got me interested in trying to draft a feathered star.  When I attempted to find a pattern to give me an idea of ratios, I discovered that the modern feathered stars have a diamond at the point of each star tip while the older ones have triangles.  Hmmmm....... Looking through pictures of both antique and modern quilts, I now notice the difference.  And neither type of pattern is easy to draft!

One of these days I'll be sharing a collection of Feathered Star quilts on a "Saturday at the Quilt Museum" post.  There are so many beautiful ones from antiquity!

Happy Quilting!


2 comments:

  1. What fun!! A lot of work and time went into that quilt ~ what a find!

    ReplyDelete