Another Vintage String Corduroy Quilt

 This is my brother’s Corduroy baby quilt that Sallie and Annie Johnson made.  There are a couple of things that amaze me about these corduroy quilts. First, the variety of fabrics. These were made in the late 50s. There are two corduroy fabrics in my quilt (shown at the top of the blog) that appear in Jack’s quilt as tiny scraps. Can you find them? Otherwise, no fabrics are used in BOTH quilts. That’s quite a variety.
 Another thing that amazes me is that the seams are not bulky. This is a string quilt and there are lots of seams, but the thickness within the blocks and where the blocks are joined together is all very smooth and even. I can’t even feel the seam allowances.

 The binding and the backing are of the same fabric. It seems to be some sort of nylon fabric. It’s kind of heavy and has a corded texture to it. The quilt has never been washed.

 When you view the individual blocks up close, this just seems to be lots of random string blocks put together. But when the whole quilt is view at a distance, it is obvious that the quilter/designer took a lot of effort to lay the blocks out in a special order. I love how the large “X”s appear in both quilts.

More from Pond Hollow Quilts

I am currently working on two special quilts. One is a wedding signature quilt (used as the guest register) and the other is my daughter’s graduation quilt. Sigh. The graduation quilt should be finished by this weekend but it looks like that’s not going to happen. If I had just made a quilt using a pattern, I would be finished. But no, I had to make it so unique and incorporate lots of different special fabrics (most of which I didn’t want to cut too small because it would lose the animals depicted on the fabrics.....it has an animal theme). So this is what is on my design wall right now:

Lol. Looks like I did cut those fabrics pretty small after all! Those of you who are familiar with Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran probably notice their influence on this design. I will add a few rows of black/white fabric to give some visual relief from all the color and pattern. Here is a glimpse of some of the fabrics:

If I had it to do over again, I would choose a pattern, maybe  Bonnie Hunter’s Scrappy Mountain Majesties or something else with a repeating block (but still using scrappy fabrics). When you use a pattern, most of the time-consuming decision making has been done for you......never underestimate how much work is involved with figuring out block/piece sizes to get everything to fit together. At this point, I am keeping Gwen’s advice in mind: if it’s too long, cut it off......if it’s too short, add something.