Today I’m pulling a quilt from the quilt top cupboard. It’s hard to put an accurate date on it, because the fabrics are all solids. The cheddar and Turkey red, along with the weave of the cream makes me feel that this quilt dates to around 1860-1880?
I’m told that the cheddar wouldn’t have been called that back then. It may have been called sweet potato? The cheddar cheese we know today has dye added to it. Back then they didn’t add it, so cheddar would have been a creamy white.
The quilt has been tied in a very evenly spaced grid. It’s tied with two strands of Perle cotton. One green and one cream.
It has a thick cotton batting and the ties give it a tufted look?
I think this would have been difficult to quilt because of the batting..but I have considered removing a tie or two..to see if I could quilt it? I don’t know if there would be holes where the ties were..or if they would close up? I just like a quilted quilt better than tied…and think they are more durable? 
This is the pieced block.
In this pic you may be able to see that the squares in the corners of the alternate blocks have been machine stitched on top? (The two squares in the center of this strip of piecing) This was common in older Double Irish Chains. They added the square on top rather than cutting the fabrics in the alternate block to piece in the cheddar square.
The backing has been brought around to the front and stitched down to serve as binding. This was a common practice in older quilts.
I bought this quilt at an estate sale. It was the end of the sale and nobody had shown any interest in it I was told? It had an appraisal dated 1990 with it that said it was valued at $150 at that time. I happily paid the $30 they had marked it down to!
EDIT: Forgot to add that this quilt doesn’t appear to have been used? The fabrics are crisp like they are fresh from the bolt.
Thank you Joan, for calling that to my attention.
The quilt I’m pulling from the quilt cupboard today is an antique flying geese. It’s made up of cadet blue, white shirting, and gold plaid. The quilt dates to the era of 1880-1910. Cadet blue didn’t appear before 1880. Shirtings and plaids were common throughout the 1800’s, but hit their hey day during the later part of the century.
This quilt top has been hand pieced and the stitches are tight and firm. The fabrics are in very good condition too. It could be quilted up very easily. There are a few poverty patches, and I show those to you here. You can also see that a variety of cadet blues and shirtings were used, but the same gold plaid was used throughout. Our quilter of yesteryear must have gotten a nice sized piece of that one?