Ann Champion's Blog

Today the quilt top I’m pulling from the quilt top cupboard is a Tumbling Blocks design.

The top dates to around 1910-1940’s, and contains fabrics from a pretty good time  span.  The fabrics were most likely taken from a scrap bag that contained scraps from sewing clothing or other quilts.?

The mourning prints were first popular in the 1860’s, but were reproduced in the 1930-40’s.  These prints seem to be the newer ones?

The quilt top contains mourning prints, Cardinal reds, Turkey reds, shirting,   gingham, plaid, a few florals,  homespuns, a couple of large scale black and white prints, and chambray.

There are quite a few poverty patches.

When the scraps a person had weren’t large enough to cut the pattern piece from, they sewed the bits together to get a piece of fabric large enough to get the shape they needed. These were/are called poverty patches, but to me they are determination patches and it always warms my heart to see them!

One thing I find very unusual about this top is that it’s all machine pieced.

This pattern has a lot of set in seams, which can be difficult to sew.  It’s more common to see a Tumbling Blocks pattern hand sewn, and some prefer to paper piece for accuracy.

The top is also interesting because the placement of the lights, mediums and darks changes position throughout the top.   If these were real stacks of blocks it would be hard to tell which direction the light source was coming from?

The top measures roughly 70″x74″.  A bit large for a throw..but with the addition of a border or two, it could be made bed sized.