Monday, September 10, 2012

Full of Surprises

This colorful Texas scrap quilt is full of surprises. At first, I thought I was getting another quilt with a lot of double knit polyester, but there are really none. The fabrics include several wool knits, which look like they came from apparel. Some of these fabrics are heavy and course like the knits used for outerwear. Other fabrics are more finely woven and thin, like sportswear or men's clothing. There's even tartan!


It was listed as a 1950s quilt, but I think it may be a little later because of the colors. They just don't seem like 50s colors. There is electric blue, cerulean blue, lime green, and hot orange. If the fabrics were scraps leftover from clothing, or even repurposed clothing, I have to ask myself, "when would people have worn those fabrics, and when would they use the scraps to make a quilt?" Maybe five or ten years after they were popular in clothing?



These colors, and the combination of colors, suggests the psychedelic or post psychedelic era to me. Considering the fabrics likely served other purposes first, and the idea of making a quilt out of them was likely to occur later, I feel a reasonable circa date for the quilt is 1970.


So what do you think? Did I hit the nail on the head? Or am I out of my mind? What circa date would you put on it, and why? 

4 comments:

  1. I think 70's is probably a good guess. In looking at these fabrics.....I'm guessing this was one woman's attempt to get rid of all of her hubby's ugly golf pants! lol

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  2. The orange in the blue and orange houndstooth fabric is 1965..... I had a coat and a skirt of that ORANGE. The rest of the pieces are timeless pieces to me.... perhaps the seller knew one of the fabrics was from 1950's and used that to date, not knowing the quilter "rule" to use the newest fabric for date purposes. So it was a surprise.... what are you going to do with it?????

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