Saturday, February 18, 2012

Flea Market Find

1970s Hexagons made of double-knit polyester
My friend Mary Kanski from the Northwest Quilters called to tell me about a quilt she'd seen at the Tigard Flea Market. It was a double-knit polyester quilt made with many small hexagons, and it was on sale for half price! So I went to the flea market today, and here's what I found.

Detail photo taken with a flash
It's a wonderful double-knit polyester hexagon quilt with an overall concentric diamond pattern. Wow! The man who was selling it looked a little like Santa Claus. I asked if he knew anything about it, and he'd gotten it at a garage sale here in Oregon. He thought it was from the 1970s because the material was the same as that from the clothing of the time.

Binding is rolled from back to front
I don't think there's a single quilt maker today who would dare make a quilt like this out of double-knit. It's such a stretchy material, and working with it must've been difficult. There is a single line of quilting along the inside edge of each row, giving the quilt a three-dimensional effect. Again, wow! What a great find! Thank you, Mary!!

9 comments:

  1. Did you actually purchase the quilt? It must weigh a ton! And will wear like iron.

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  2. Wow...when the photos first came up it looked like rickrack! Cannot imagine sewing all that poly...but the colors really are beautiful!

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  3. Wow! Gorgeous! I have a couple polyester quilts in my little collection but none as outstanding as this one. It must have been very difficult to sew those hexagons together but the effect is like a ripple hexagon rim around rim around rim. I love it!

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  4. Yes, I bought the quilt. It doesn't weigh as much as you might think, and it's held up well. It does have kind of a rick rack or ripple effect because of how it's quilted. A very clever way to take advantage of the stretchy quality of the fabric.

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  5. Perfect for your collection. It is a very striking quilt that I really like. Nice score!!

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  6. I am glad you like it. When I saw it, it had your name written all over it. I wll keep an eye out on my trip to the thrift stores.

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  7. I gotta know: How in the world does one even make something like this? I have a bunch of double knit fabric left over from a family member's estate and I don't want to just throw it away. I've been told that a quilt made with double knit fabric will last forever, but I cannot transpose a 1/4" seam on cotton into double knit in my brain. Help! Books? Tutorials?

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    Replies
    1. By the time I bought it, the information from the maker was long gone. It was made some time in the 1970s and I bought it around 2012 I think. If you want to make a quilt out of those fabrics, ask someone who made quilts in the 1970s. That would not be me, though.

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