Last week I said I was turning the blog over to you readers, and a few have sent along pictures of treasured quilts. I am just loving seeing these precious pieces.

Kathy Osborne shared pictures of her mother’s quilts and they got me to thinkin’…

She mentioned how she loved that they had just used whatever fabric they had on hand “the mismatched is the best,” she said. And I completely agree!

I’ll bet if we could talk with this quilter, we’d soon learn that these are fabrics leftover from sewing projects for her family. Maybe they were even clothes that had been worn many times and when she had to ‘retire’ a piece, she found parts that had enough life left to make a quilt square.

There are two different quilts here, one from the 1960’s and another from the ‘40s.

I want to particularly draw your attention to the back of the older quilt. Don’t you just love that little floral and rose print? Now this side was only meant to hold the pieces together and lie against the bed. Quilt backings got little attention yet they are sometimes the most interesting part.

There are two entirely different fabrics here. Now I’ve mentioned before that very wide pieces of fabric are relatively new - since the introduction of commercial looms. Of course these are certainly commercially-produced fabrics, but the backing may well have been something already on-hand, possibly for another project. Many quilters of Mrs. Griffith’s generation would’ve never thought to go buy fabric for a quilt; quilts were something made of scraps, even the backing. Still, she has tried to match the fabrics as closely as she could - using two light red florals with blue accents, rather than making an entirely patched backing which would have been even more difficult to quilt through - and that one is handquilted.

How I wish I could pepper these two ladies with questions, or even just sit around a quilt frame and work alongside them. I just know they could teach me not only about quilting but all of life!