Vintage Whole Cloth Quilt
This is a beautiful 1940's half square triangle “cheater” fabric whole cloth quilt. Cheater fabric is fabric designed and printed to look like patchwork or applique and a cheater quilt allows you to skip the huge task of doing piecework on a quilt.
This quilt was originally put together with by sewing the quilt front to the quilt back and “turned” so that the finished edge was on the outside.
When I received the quilt there had already been some repairs done to the quilt--the large white patches covered some holes and the edge had been mended.
So, to start repairing this quilt I removed the 2 white patches. When I did that I found that most of the ties had pulled through the front and were left on the back. I removed all of the remaining blue and green yarn ties from the fabric.
The fabric on the back of the quilt was not as faded and in better shape than the front of the quilt. I thought the front of the quilt was in too rough a shape
Since most of the damage on the back of the quilt was along the center seam,
I cut out the holes along center seam so I could re-stitch a new center seam.
I then cut around the outside edge, making sure to cut out only the damaged
parts and to make square.
After I restitched the center seam, there were 2 small holes and 1 medium hole to fix.
I fixed these holes by putting a lightweight interfacing on the back of each one, then created a patch for each one that fit the pattern of the quilt so they would blend in and not be very noticeable, especially after it was quilted.
The patches were made from the front of the original quilt. After the patches were made, I sewed them over the holes.
The quilt top is finished!
I sent both this picture and the next picture to the owner to asked her if she would like a border on her quilt.
I was so glad that she wanted the border because that will help to protect the vintage fabric when using the quilt.
The corners of the border are pieced from some of the fabric from the original vintage fabric that wasn’t being used and from the white patches from the original quilt used to cover the large holes.
The long strips in between the patchwork is new matching fabric.
I thought it would be cool to back the quilt with fabric that was similar in color and pattern to the blanket that was used as batting in the original quilt.
The owner agreed and chose a vintage fabric from choices that I sent her.
This is what she chose:
Then I put together the “quilt sandwich”. I added a new plain white sheet to the quilt to add stability to the vintage fabrics. I layered the quilt in this order from top to bottom:
Quilt top
Batting
White Sheet
Pink plaid fabric.
I then quilted the fabric on my sewing machine using the Straight line quilting method (a.k.a. Matchstick quilting). I followed the lines of the pattern in the gorgeous vintage fabric.
**Please note**: This is the only vintage quilt that I was ever able to repair using my sewing machine. Most vintage quilts are pieced and are not whole cloth quilts. Pieced quilts must be repaired by hand sew
After the quilting was finished, I trimmed off the excess batting and backing and squared up the quilt.
And added a matching binding around the edge of the Quilt
The mitered corners were sewn down so that they would stay in place.
Finished!
Finished size is approximately 60 ¼” x 81”.
**Please note**: This is the only vintage quilt that I was ever able to repair using my sewing machine. Most vintage quilts are pieced and are not whole cloth quilts. Pieced quilts must be repaired by hand sewing them.
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