chairjogger

oh my gosh !!! People have the "someone else's treasure" disease!!!
Congratulations !!

Ellen

pittsburgpam

I don't know if the gathers and puckers are intentional. The hand sewing is very large stitches. The blocks are well done, both by hand and machine, and a big difference from the sashing. Maybe someone put the sashing and border on another person's finished blocks and didn't like how it came out.

I think I'll take off the sashing and borders and use a different fabric. It will get a new life, as someone said.

chairjogger

this year i did a tree skirt. the fabric for the sashing stretched badly ! I did not know how to handle that.. so.. i never backed it or finished..

Maybe that is what happened.

either way for you.. you do have a find !!

Ell

Marcia

I think that they are really neat old quilt tops!!!!!! If they were mine I would either tie them or just leave them as tops. I would remove the wrinkly border and sew it back on sans the wrinkles if I was going to finish it.

I have several old quilts my grandmother made. One of the ones with a scalloped border has one more scallop on one side of the quilt than the other. I love it that way-I think it gives it character!!

k_jupiter

Well, ya know, this is a complex subject.

1.) The most interesting part of quilting for me is the interpretation of a design in the top through piecing, followed second by what effects can I illicit through creative machine quilting.

so...
2.) I have bought a couple of tops on EBay cheap. They were nice but when I got them, they were not me. They still sit, unquilted.

and then when I look at these tops...

3.) I realize someone put a heckofa lot of work into them...

with the results of...

4.) They came out looking like that? It makes me sad.

So my advice is...

Unless there is an emotional attachment...
or the quilt top is so stunning that it begs to be finished...

Do your own piecing. Make your own quilt tops.

Life is too short for someone else's homely quilts.

tim in san jose (you must live near me!)

pittsburgpam

I appreciate your point of view but part of the point to me is... someone did put a lot of effort into these quilts. I can imagine that the square blocks were made long ago, some of them are sewn by hand, some by machine (and by the look, an old machine). The fabrics and prints look like they are from a different era than ours.

I can imagine that someone else did the sashing who maybe didn't really know what they were doing. They took big running stitches in thick yellow thread and the fabric bunched and gathered.

I think it can be taken apart and put back together and made into something pleasing. Ok... maybe not the other one with the strange color and pattern mixture but that's a different story. Still it is an older quilt made from scraps that someone had. And you know.. I just remembered that I also bought a little plastic bag of blocks that were taken apart... I'll have to find it.

Yes, I am near you in the Bay Area.