The Quilt of A Thousand Vintage Fabrics

This past Christmas, I received a lovely gift from my mother. She won at auction, a few weeks before, a beautiful hand-made, hand-tied quilt created entirely from fabrics of the 1920s through the 1940s.

The quilt was made by the ladies of the Battle Born Civil War Reenactors, and features a wonderful array of tiny vintage parallelograms. It’s big, snuggly, and offers all kinds of inspiration for vintage blouses and summer dresses.

I thought it would be fun to take some of my favorite fabric swatches from the quilt and try to recreate them on Spoonflower. It takes time, but here are a few I’ve been working on…

It also seemed like a lot of these fabric designs had never gone out of style, and could probably be found in the quilting section today. I endeavored to secure one or two I felt were close to some of the quilt fabrics, to make a couple versions of Wearing History’s 1930s Day Blouse, but was amazed to find not much at all at Joann’s. It looks like for the time being, quilting cottons have moved onto more “modern” designs.  Let’s hope they veer back towards these vintage prints soon!

I want to make the short-sleeved version on the right

I did find a couple cotton prints that will work, printed out my ePattern, taped it together, and now it’s ready to cut. I’ll post about my progress later. 🙂  In the meantime, I might be curled up under the quilt, keeping warm!