Funky Kentucky Beauty

I discovered this funky Kentucky beauty on eBay yesterday with just a couple hours before the end of the auction. Good thing I didn't have plans or the evening. Sniping on eBay is serious business! If you're not familiar with eBay snipers, they are bidders who place bids in the last seconds of an auction. These bids are typically much higher than the current bid, which often ensures that the sniper will win the item.

Over the years I've had great success sniping auctions on eBay, and I've known some of the people who bid on items I've won. The most frequently asked question I get is, "Do you use sniper software?" I've never tried it. I bid manually, the old fashioned way, watching the countdown in the last 15 minutes of the auction. In the last minute, I bid, and usually have time for just one bid.

Sometimes I go up against other snipers, as I did in the auction for this quilt. In this auction, the bid was under $200 going in to the last minute. I entered my bid, and when the auction was over I'd won the quilt for $343.88. The other bidder entered a bid of 338.88, and since I bid higher, the system automatically entered an incrementally higher bid of $5 more than the other sniper's bid. Easy peasy.

The quilt is from Kentucky. The top was made in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and it was machine quilted most likely at a later time. The way the grid quilting goes across the whole quilt is probably not what the maker of the top would've done, but it's interesting and has held the quilt together. There are a couple of large stains on the quilt, so it's kind of a rescue quilt. I may try to work on those stains.

It's also a time-span quilt, and I can't wait to see it in person. The border, which could possibly be a synthetic red rather than a "Turkey" red, may provide some clues about when it was quilted. The back fabric, which appears to be rolled to the front as binding, may have other clues. The life of this quilt intrigues me, and I'm sure it has many stories to tell.