Teacup

My DH and I just got back tonight from a brief trip to Kentucky and Ohio. I agreed to attend an antique telephone collectors meeting if I could also spend time in a quilt shop. (I ran into a wife at the meeting who was quilting and we had a great conversation while the guys got excited about their old phones.) Today was my turn. On the trip home I ran across a very nice quilt shop in Waynesville, OH (between Dayton and Cincinnati) -- The Fabric Shack. The folks were nice, great fabric selection, and they have a web site that has some good prices on some lines of fabric: www.fabricshack.com. Take a look...they have a big selection. I saw there were some good prices on some of the holiday fabric. And for anyone in the area (I'm six hours away and will likely not be there again) she said you can order online and arrange pickup at the store to avoid shipping. They had a second store up the street that focuses on upholstery and drapery fabric. I didn't have time to explore it, but if you're in that area, you might want to take a look.

This afternoon we stopped at an antique mall in Indiana. In one booth I was dismayed to see over a dozen old quilts cup up to make IRONING BORAD COVERS! It made me sad to see a lovely Irish Chain, Drunkard's Path, Grandmother's Flower Garden and other quilts in really pretty good condition cut up like that. The ironing boards were cute, but the quilts ruined. Not to mention that they are impractical to iron on, as they are not completely smooth and the seams will eventually stretch and tear. There were also dozens of pillows from old quilts...mostly pieces that had some wear. I don't have as much a problem with that...I prefer to see old quilts intact but if one is really a mess, taking part to make pillows doesn't seem so bad. But ironing board covers from quilts in decent shape??? Anyway, it bothered me. I guess I just treasure my few old family quilts and would hate to see them end up this way.

amma

It sounds like you had a wonderful trip outside of seeing the ironing board covers.... It is a shame to see them used in that manner unless they had obvious holes somewhere else on them...
Out here ironing board covers are very popular, they are for decoration while stored in a spare room or laundry area, removed when using the board.

dizzy

i would most likely be doing some crying by the time i got back to the van cause i know how much time it takes to get each of them done an it depends on pattern to.I just couldn't cut one up that way either.

Lisa T

You know, there may have been damage to them in some other way. I recently saw a beautiful quilt at a thrift store and grabbed it up, only to see some burn holes in a section of it. It looked like it had maybe been folded and placed too near a fire and sparks landed on the part of it that was showing. So maybe something like that happened to these quilts? (We can hope, anyway!)

Eddie

Yikes! I don't think I could ever piece up an old quilt...it just seems wrong to undo someone else's work like that.

daisyboo9

I am with you, I would be mortified to see that someones work has been destroyed like that! old quilts should be treasured even if there is some ripping or holes etc. They should be treated with respect and every effort made to preserve them. But thats just my opinion.

Ethel A

I have a feeling that the person who cut up those old quilts are not quilters, to begin with. Only quilters (and those who live and witness the amount of work that goes into each quilt) would leave a quilt alone.

Pam B

While I agree, also, that whoever turned the quilts into ironing board covers was probably not a quilter...I could see wanting one to cover my ironing board that sits out all the time. This person sees a market for this and simply is providing the material. While I would never cut up one of my quilts, or the quilts of my aunt or grandmother...I might possibly be tempted to pick up on at a resale store (goodwill or other places) and do that, especially if, as a previous poster said, there were stains/tears on the quilt in other places.