This wonderful, string-pieced polyester quilt top was one of two vintage tops gifted to me last year by Nyima Lhamo, aka Andrea Balosky. Nyima is still living in Mungpoo, Darjeeling, India. Our friend Carolyn Platt sent them from Camp Sherman, where Nyima had them in storage.
There wasn't time to take photos right away, but I took a few snapshots. My friend Gloria admired one of the fabrics in the other top when I posted the pictures, so I sent it to her and held on to the polyester top. Eventually I sent a belated thank you to Nyima, but hadn't had a chance to take photos until this week.
The back was so interesting, I had to photograph it just like the front, with full view and detail photos.
My recent articles about improvisational quiltmaking and Hawaiian scrap quilts talk about the connection between garment making and patchwork. The foundation string-pieced block is part of that discussion. String piecing and crazy piecing both involved piecing on cloth foundation.
It took a lot of scraps to make this top, and the fabrics are really great. The one I love the most is yellow with psychedelic pooches and flowers. What a riot!
The foundation fabric is also very interesting. Scraps were used in the top and in the foundation.
Each block is six inches square, and the top is approximately 75 inches by 89 inches, maybe a bit smaller when accounting for stretching.
I can see why Nyima liked this top. The fabrics are so interesting, and the blocks are so simple but they create such a complex design. Of course, the polyester fabrics are vibrant as the day they were made.
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