I grew up in the era of double knit fabrics, and my mother was a professional seamstress. (For any of you modern sewists, that’s what we were called back then!). That meant there was plenty of double knits in my house. However, my mom didn’t quilt, so I don’t have any double knit quilts from her. I do remember making pillows and stuffed animal and doll clothes from it, though!

But this post is about this fabulous quilt.

Years ago, a friend gave me her aunt’s buckets of fabric, and then asked if I wanted this top, too. If not, she was going to throw it away. I couldn’t let that happen, could I?

It is a queen size, or nearly queen size, top. It is very heavy and hard to photograph.

But this is the amazing thing… Look closely!

That’s right! The whole thing is HAND PIECED! Can you believe it? Now, before you get all judgey on me–yes, those stitches are rather large–but have you ever tried to put a needle through double knit? I’m just amazed that the woman got the top finished!

I did find a row that appeared to be machine stitched over the hand piecing:

I thought perhaps she had noticed that some of her stitches were not holding so well.

However, on closer inspection, I see that this may have been an attempt to quilt it without a backing.

She went around each orange checkered square all around the quilt. Can you imagine how hard that must have been? Wrestling this huge, heavy quilt around and around in a small, household machine? I can’t blame her for doing only one “trip.”

But, oh, the questions I wish I could ask her! Did she start out to make a quilt with a batting and backing? Perhaps this was as far as she meant to go. Did she plan to go around each of the squares like she did the orange ones? If so, why did she start with that row instead of the middle? What was to be the purpose of this quilt? How many hours did she work on it? Did she have a graph paper plan or was she just using what she had at the time?

Here’s another close-up. She didn’t care that the selvedge was visible!

This is the only way I could get the whole top into a photo. It’s outside on my driveway.

Now, the question I have for you all: what would you do with this? It’s been rolled up in a ball in a window seat of my library for 14 years.

I used to think it was ugly, and frankly, close up, it is! But step back aways (far enough that you can’t tell it’s double knits!) and it’s actually quite striking.

I definitely won’t be throwing it away. Future generations may want a record of the crazy fabrics quilters in the 70’s had to work with! And it will definitely be around for generations, and generations, and generations…..!

In my next couple of posts, I will be showing a couple of quilts from my husband’s grandmother. If you love old quilts, you won’t want to miss it, so please consider subscribing!