Crazy, Wonky, Red Vintage Quilt

I finished a quilt last week that I absolutely LOVE!  I bought these pieces off Ebay last fall for $9.99, to be exact.  No one else bid on them!

I loved the old fabrics, but mostly the one in the upper right hand corner that says "Gay Blade".  The origin of this phrase is a dashing swordsman, which can be seen by the design.  One of the strips was paper pieced, so I began my research here to determine the age of the fabrics and the date it might have been made.  I was frustrated when I could find NO dates, NO headlines, nothing that told me the year of this paper!  I finally found something about a coach at a local college.  So I plugged it into google and bingo, he coached in 1962.  That was easy!

You can see in the bottom right there is a wedding or engagement photo of a woman named Claire Hunter.  Let me begin this synchronistic story by telling you this came from Tulsa on a Thursday in October of last year.  On that Saturday, we were driving TO Tulsa for a wedding........the wedding of Claire and Hunter!!!  Gave me goosebumps!  I wrote the woman who had bought these pieces at an estate sale and told her the irony.  She then told me we would be passing on the highway, as she was driving to Lawrence (my town) to visit her daughter in college!  WOWZA!  Pretty full circle right there.  I knew these pieces were meant for me!

Last week I finally stitched all the pieces together, using a lot of red sashing.  Turned out to be a massive king sized monster.  It will fit my bed perfectly and I'll have a great story to tell!

OH, but wait!  I meant to show you the backing!  My dear mother-in-law passed a few years back and left oodles of fabric, which I was lucky enough (sometimes) to inherit.  She had 10 yards!!! of this crazy spotted fabric.  I used ALL of it for the backing!  Yay!  So now I have a part of her in this quilt too!