Flower Power

I seem to have crossed some sort of invisible line.  I'm starting to get "old" quilts for repair that are full of fabrics just like the ones I actually remember wearing.  I'm still not quite able to conceive of this shift in things. When I started learning about and repairing antique quilts, it was the 1980s.  Generally the most recent things I worked on were about 40-50 years old, made in the 1930s and '40s.  Well now, people are still bringing me quilts that are 40-50 years old, but that now places them in the 1960s or '70s.  Those were my coming-of-age decades.  I seem to have been here on the Earth for quite a while now.

Here's a walk down memory lane for people of the same vintage.  The quilt belongs to a friend of mine, made by her grandmother, and containing scraps from making the clothes of her childhood.

A dated quilt is always a treasure because it provides a snapshot of one scrap basket of that era.  These are not all necessarily mid-1970s fabrics, but assuming the date refers to the completion of the quilt and is not a commemorative date, which looks to me to be the case, no fabric is younger than 1976.

So journey back with me to the world of psychedelics and flower power.  Groovy, man.

And for a good chuckle:  The blue corner patch at the lower left was badly torn, both outside edges flapping in the breeze.

I happen to have a fabric in my stash which is the shirt tails left from one of my husband's favorite old shirts.  It is certainly from this exact same era, worn by him for years and years until the elbows and collar gave out.  And now it has provided a very close match to that worn piece.  Hee hee.