Five Dollar Cutter Quilt…

Poor sad quilt indeed…

The Engineer and I were walking through a local outdoor antique area the other week and as I passed by a vendor I stopped and backed up.  He was sitting on a cut up very dirty old quilt laid out on the tail gate of his pick-up. 

Let me say – I’m being very kind when I say dirty… it was truly grossly dirty.

I could tell it was cut up and the binding was frayed in two and that the fabric in the blocks was fraying… but I loved the colors – green and orange.  And I loved the Winding Ways pattern…

So I asked the guy if he would sell the piece of quilt he was sitting on.  He laughed as he stood up… said it was really dirty and asked how much?  I offered him $5 and he accepted.  He stuffed it into a plastic bag – which I securely tied shut… did I mention it was dirty? and smelly?

It was so dirty that after spending 2 hours on the soak cycle in my front loading washer with the ‘Quilt Wash’ stuff… the cleaning towels I threw in with it were brown… they had absorbed some of the grime.  Ick!!  So I figured I couldn’t hurt anything at that point – I added detergent and ran it on the hot cycle with a double rinse.  The end result of that cycle was much better – I think I was more concerned at that point about loosing the old towels I use to dry off the dogs.  LOL

The individual winding ways blocks were hand pieced and finish at about 6”.  At first I thought that the quilt was all hand constructed – but in looking it appears some of the blocks were joined together by hand and others were joined by machine.  I’ll have to get my magnifying glass out and see if I can tell if there is any kind of pattern to how it was assembled.  

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There is some staining still – mildew, oil ??? – on the back and as you can see there is a lot of fraying across most of what is left here.  What I have left is approx. 24” x 66”.

Must have been really lovely at one point…