Staff Project: Vintage Quilt Top Quilt

by Cameron

A long, long time ago, Hannah - maker of leather handles and former Bolt gal - asked me if I'd like to finish a vintage quilt top she'd been given, and I said, "I'd love to, but I'm very self aware and really good at time management so I should tell you that you won't see this finished quilt for over a year." Or I wish I'd said that because my process took a little bit longer than I expected when she handed the quilt top to me.

Nevertheless, I finally finished the quilt and I'm so happy that this beautifully hand pieced quilt top is now out of the closet and being used regularly by Hannah's lovely family.

I don't know how to paper piece (yet! I'd love to learn), so I decided to add some large blocks of white to make the quilt top a more manageable size. I had hopes of the finished quilt being even larger, but I could never get the vertical borders to lay flat, so I had to leave them off.

For the back, I went with a wacky mixture of scraps and recycled fabrics that I ended up liking quite a bit. Quilt backs are usually my favorite part of a quilt because there's less pressure. I used wool batting because I think it makes such a gorgeous, drape-y finished quilt. I hand quilted and tied everything together with my favorite embroidery floss, Perle Cotton. I really liked that for this project, the only new supplies I needed to purchase were the batting, the Perle cotton, and white quilting weight cotton. It felt good to take things that weren't being put to use and give them a new life.

Have you ever worked with a vintage quilt top?