Original Design
Unidentified Quilt Maker
Circa 1940
76 x 82 inches
Origin Unknown
Someone had a lively imagination, and some excellent needlework skills, and created what we believe to be an original design. Sometime around 1940, s/he chose several traditional elements ~ combining them in absolutely unique ways.
The quilt, measuring 76 x 82 inches, would be great either on a wall or a bed. It's in excellent condition and has fine and unusual hand quilting. Excellent Condition
Lost for words, I asked my friend, Joe Cunningham to give his impressions:
"This quilt makes me think that someone from the Hawaiian quilting tradition decided to make a mainland-style quilt. Not only the color scheme, the mostly red and white, and no it only the echo quilting in much of it, but the overall exuberance and the organic shapes seem somehow tropical.
The way the grapes are freely bunched, with those non-grape leaves and vines around them, the spike-y flowers, the way the white wreaths wander around the corner blocks and in the middle—it is all done by an experienced quilt maker, but one seeming to be imitating the floral medallion style. The white appliquéd leaves in the red areas are so unusual in American quilt making as to be rare, and it is that white on red appliqué that reminds me so much of Hawaiian quilting."