Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Selvages in a 1960's Quilt



This quilt was made by my sister, Lynne Jakubauskas (now of Montpelier, VT) back in the 1960's when we were kids in CT. Forty years later, this quilt is still in use! Our Mom thought it needed a little restoration, so she replaced 23 squares that were worn through (using the bright multi-colored fabric that you can see in the middle photo). The store-bought blanket binding was in shreds, so Mom asked me to make a new binding. Lynne isn't into sewing these days. I made a double fold binding using about 6 different compatible fabrics to go with the scrap theme. Lynne made about 6 of these quilts, and she used everything she could find: polyester, drapery fabric, corduroy, terrycloth, wool...Mom took out the wool. It became boiled wool, after all the washings and dryings, giving the quilt an interesting shape!

As I took a new look at this old family antique, I noticed that she included selvages! I'm sure in the 1960's we didn't know that selvages weren't to be used in quilts. We had plenty of scraps of that drapery/upholstery fabric. Mom reupholstered a sofa with it.

I love how Lynne quilted this. She used red thread to match the solid colored backing. We didn't have a quilter's walking foot. She just put that thing on the machine and went for it! And she sewed over all those stretchy and bulky patches, through all the corner seam bulk, and then turned the quilt and repeated the process to make cross-hatching! Yes, she is something of an over-achiever. There are a few puckers, but not many. She did a great job. And any quilt still in use after 40 years is a winner!
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