Finished For Friday, Vintage Fan Quilt

These  vintage blocks came from an estate auction sale, cannot remember what I paid but not very much probably $15-20, and they are hand pieced. Obviously the quilter was unable to complete her work because thirty four fans were pieced with centers no corners, and I machine sewed together another six fans from precut pieces that came with it, added centers by hand with a 30's reproduction and then sewed corners on all of them using Kona muslin.

 The quilt is very square but does not hang against a wall consequently the sides appear to cave in, not so!

 As you can see when I laid it on the floor to photograph, the sides are straight. I frogged the entire stop border, I was not happy with the bump feathers it seems to be harder to make only one half of the bump feather, so I re-quilted the stop border with longarm feathers.

Those you see at the top of the pic above are bump feathers, to make them you "bump" back over the top of every other feather so they are nested together, and they are harder to do than long arm feathers which are quilted separately like those underneath the border in the stop border.
Borders are a great place to practice feathers, particularly bump "feathers" or "over the top" as some call them. For a quite a while I was intimidated by bump feathers long after I had become very comfortable with longarm feathers.They no longer scare me but I am still anxious to practice them as they are far from perfect. However, matching thread is your friend to hide imperfections then  "wave" the line of quilting a little and the eye will be drawn to that movement rather than individual feathers.

 I am more consistent at embroidering provenance on the backing prior to quilting and someone told me recently that quilt historians are begging quilters to place provenance on their quilts. You may not think any of your work will be around in a century or more but neither did the women making quilts in the 1800's! Maker's name, location and the date are the three most important facts then the purpose of the quilt and for whom it was made.

The back ground is tiny peacock feathers my favorite fill design. Originally after about one pass of quilting I didn't like the result and took it off to frog but never attempted to, and a year or so later it didn't seem worth all the effort to take out so much stitching. Back on the longarm it went and I plowed on with the design rather than starting from scratch again.
I am really OK with it and no doubt the original piecer is delighted!

The backing is also Kona muslin I used a wide back 108". I will bind it with the same blue as the stop border.