Spools and Bugs

You are probably wondering about the title of this post.  Here's the spools part - a quilt made in 1965. It had quite a bit of wear in the squares along one edge, and several open seams.  (This photo was taken post-repair.)

Here's the bugs part - a fabric with chartreuse and turquoise bugs on a grey background.  The color combo is pretty much a marker for the 1950s.  Pictorial prints were popular then, but why the large bugs?  Hardly a print to appeal to the stereotypical perfect housewife of the era! And to me, they look rather dead, what with those curled up legs and all.  Huh.  Not appealing in the least.  Maybe the fabric is meant to illustrate the maxim, "The only good bug is a dead bug."  Maybe.

Anyhow.  The quilt is a nicely made rendition of the spools pattern, one of those homey, quilt-y quilts.  I like the addition of the checkerboard borders.  They give the quilt a bit of extra weight and a sparkle of extra personality.

The quilt is initialed and dated on the back:

Here's a look at some more of the fabrics - all of them with much more common print designs.

Dated quilts are always special, and I like to post about them, because they are so helpful to quilt collectors who want to learn how to puzzle out when their quilts were made.