Fun at Moonlight Quilters

Last week I was in Santa Rosa at the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County.

Before my lecture, I was so excited to see some antique tile quilt blocks.  Laura Bernstein is the lucky owner of this batch of blocks which also includes borders.  The blocks and borders are not finished blocks but all of the "tiles" have been selected and have been thread basted in place, waiting to be appliqued and turned into a quilt.  It was fascinating to see these blocks.  For the record, we have only been able to document about 25 actual antique tile quilts so to see these blocks was amazing.  Laura purchased the blocks from a dealer so unfortunately not much information is available as to their origin.  The fabrics in the "tiles" are obviously from the late 19th century which ties in to the timeframe for this style of quilt which is last third of the 19th century.

Laura was kind enough to allow me to take these quilts with me overnight so that I could photograph them.  I was staying with Judy Matheson and the next day we put them up on Judy's design wall.

 The blocks are mostly random shapes.  I didn't try to put them up in any sort of order, just to get an idea of what was there.  Some have a circle or square at the center.  And this isn't all of the blocks -- there are more.  I love the dabs of cheddar in the borders.

Here's a few of the blocks including a close up of the basting on the first one.

 

Judy, thanks for asking Laura to bring her blocks for me to see!

And then on Saturday came the Workshop with some of the Moonlight Quilters with all the wonderful fabric selections and designs.

This block is was drawn in class from the Macintosh Rose quilt in the gallery of Tile Quilt Revival.

 Great work everyone!