Attic Windows

This quilt came to me for a wash.  The wash brightened it up, but did not remove the staining.  (The stains are more obvious in real life than in the photo.)  It is one of a pair of twin-sized quilts.  Sadly, the second quilt is pretty severely stained.

The pattern is called Attic Windows.  It's a great way to use scrap fabrics and one's imagination.  The scraps become little glimpses of the world outside the tiny windows.  Consistent shading of the window frames will create the illusion of depth.

It is one of those wonderful quilts that is dated.  The date is embroidered on one of the back corners - June 22, 1959.  So these windows also give us a glimpse into the fabrics available in the late 1950s.  This is particularly fun for me, because this is the world of fabric, as it were, into which I was born.

Here are the fabrics from both quilts, in all their 1950s glory.  Turquoises, purples, blacks, apple greens, pictorals, geometric formats - these are all hallmarks of the 1950s styles.  

This fabric is fun - it has a grid of printed quilting stitches. This block is also an example of how smaller scraps of fabric were pieced together to make pieces large enough to fill the windows.  

If you look carefully in the photos above, you can see other pieced window fabrics.  This quilter was certainly being frugal and using all her scraps!  

The quilts' owner shares her ancestor's story:

These quilts were made by Mabel Connelly.  She was born in Kentucky, farmed with her husband in Mississippi, and finally settled in central Indiana. It was while at Twin Bridges Farm that Mabel taught herself how to quilt, although it is possible she had some tutelage from her mother and aunts in Kentucky.  Her husband made the frames for her.  Although she left an extensive collection of needlepoint, it is Mabel's quilts that are more cherished by her family.