When I am browsing through ebay, I often come across "cutter" quilts for sale, with mixed emotions. Some quilts just are too damaged to use in any other capacity, and in my own home I have bears, bunnies, pigs, pillows,etc made from the remnants of old quilts. These little quilt pieces are still loved and appreciated this way and not shoved into a corner or a closet!
Do I advocate cutting up a perfectly good antique quilt just because you can make more money off it it by "piecing" it out? Heck No!
I hadn't bought just the cutter pieces before, because I didn't want to make bunnies or bears. But it occurred to me that if the piece was big enough...and in okay enough shape...that I could bind it and display it as a table topper. Many pieces end up looking like doll quilts or crib quilts.
It is a good way to get a sampling of actual fabrics that were used during a specific time period in history! It is a special feeling to run your fingers over these fabrics of a by-gone era and see and feel the stitches of the woman who pieced this "cutter" piece and wonder what her life was like.
A few weeks ago I came across this cutter piece. It was a long narrow piece of a log cabin quilt. It is a tied quilt, pieced on a muslin foundation, wool batting is used inside, and the backing is a wool blanket. This quilt must have been HEAVY! I cut it in half, squared it up, cutting out some of the really damaged areas (Hence one half now is shorter than the other)and found a blue stripe in my stash that would look like it fit in with the other fabrics in the cutter and used that to bind them. This quilt is tied with what looks like "string"...maybe it came off of some seed bags or something and was saved for tying quilts? Who knows....
What is amazing to me too, is that the quilt was machine sewn on an early machine. She used black thread to sew the strips to the foundations.
I'm happy to have these little pieces in my collection! I finished the binding on them during the workshop up in Burnsville NC on monday.
