This lovely quilt came to me for washing - it had met with a disaster or two that had left stains. I'm happy to say that I got the stains out.
The quilt is huge, about 112" square, so the full quilt photos were especially tricky. So was laying it out to dry, because it was not much smaller than the plastic drop cloth I use at drying time and had to be positioned just-so.
Isn't this quilt lovely? Springtime personified. A good thing to post here in the Chicago area where winter snow came early and we are clearly into the time of grey winter days.
I haven't seen this pattern before, have you? The yo-yo flowers are so sweet!
And the needlework skills are perfection.
It was purchased about 15 years ago near Veroqua, Wisconsin. A friend of the owner had arranged a tour of Amish farms, with women bringing out their for-sale quilts. So this was purchased from the maker, in her house, which is kind of special.
A note about washing quilts:
With antique quilts, I generally follow Xenia Cord's basic quilt washing instructions, which go something like this: "If you're thinking about washing an antique quilt, go lie down for a while and wait until the feeling passes."
It may sound a tad cute, but actually is good advice. Washing is tricky at best, when fabrics are old and weak, dyes are unknown and not formulated to withstand our modern washing agents, stain origin is unknown, stains have been set for decades. This is especially the case for home washing situations. Conservation labs have all sorts of washing tables and controls that are impossible in the home.
I generally recommend against washing unless the quilt is so dirty that there is no other option to save it. When I do wash, I don't use anything but Orvus Paste and don't do spot cleaning. But this one is not antique, and the owner really needed it clean to keep using it. I did several rounds of spot cleaning with an oxygen cleaner, followed by a total soak in the oxygen cleaner, and finally the usual Orvus soak.
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