Garage sale finds

Last Thursday, my parents did a pop-in visit and told me that there was a garage sale open down the street and that the ladies had a few ceramic roosters out (my kitchen has a TON of rooster/chicken stuff in it for decorations). So, they dropped me off on their way out, and I went looking for the roosters. They were cute but quite pricey, so I continued digging around and came across two antique quilts stuffed in a box under one of the tables!

These are definitely 1930's era quilts--the lilac/lavender color and the "Nile" or mint green color as solids with the white/off-white background are dead giveaways.This one is approximately 84" x 72" and is the "Handy Andy" block set with sashing and cornerstones. I identified the block using my Barbara Brackman Blockbase software--she attributes the ID to Ruth Finley, who wrote Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them published in 1929. Note how the center squares of the Handy Andy blocks and the cornerstones are a different shade of lavender:This one is hand quilted and hand pieced--it's worn, the binding is frayed along the edge, and there are some small tears in some of the purple patches, but hey, you can't really expect an almost 80-year-old quilt to survive this long without a few "wrinkles." Here is a detail of the hand quilting:The "batting" in this quilt actually looks like it is white flannel. I read in the book Dating Fabrics A Color Guide 1800-1960 by Eileen Jahnke Trestain that is was fairly common for Depression Era quilts to have flannel used as batting.

The second quilt is an Irish Chain, approx. 63" x 73". This one is also hand quilted but I believe it to be machine pieced (and there are a couple places where patches were very carefully mended by machine, too).

In the white areas between the chains, the quilter made flower motifs, star motifs, and pinwheel-like motifs. This one seems to have actual batting in it, but it's hard to tell as the batting has migrated all over. This one has a white fabric "flange" around the outside that I don't believe ever had batting in it--it doesn't appear to be a binding that has come undone--it just seems to be a little flange of white fabric. I don't know that much about '30's quilts--maybe this was a style back then.

Finding two antique quilts at a garage sale: $10 each. Having a little bit of quilt history: priceless.