Older Quilts - Bowties

Because I'm working on the quilting for that huge Field of Tulips--it's 90" X 100"--there's really nothing new to show.  So here's what used to be one of my all-time favorite quilts.

 All the blocks were hand-pieced with center rectangles.  It hung in several of my homes for many years.  Unfortunately, it was made in the 1980's when fabric manufacturers were insisting that as long as fabrics held their colors for 14 to 18 hours of exposure to light, that was long enough. Not!

Here's a detail of hand piecing and hand quilting:

 

That little beige inner border was once printed with beautiful little rose-colored flowers.  They're barely visible now.  Most of the time, when I take the quilt out to look at it, it just makes me sad that all that work was done with full-priced fabrics that were such low quality.  When I was making this quilt, I carried the pieces everywhere and pieced every time I had a couple of minutes.

I made several more bow-tie quilts in the years following this one--one was given to my baby sister and the rest were given away as baby quilts--and they were pieced with two corner triangles next to squares so that although they looked like bowties, they weren't this old, old patchwork pattern.

I do so little hand work now that I doubt I'll ever manage to produce another bowtie quilt like this one.