$679.00
Measures 96″ wide x 115″ long
Enjoy the home-like feel of this Hearts All Around king quilt. The deep shades of black contrast with a softer tone of white. Mrs. Hosea Yoder hand-quilted this beautiful quilt. It is initialed and dated. On a queen-size mattress, this quilt will have 18 inches of drop per side with sufficient length for a pillow tuck.
Homemade quilts combine the warmth of a bed cover with a unique story told by the quilters from Lancaster County, PA. Every homemade quilt is as unique as the family, busy mother or Amish ladies group who uses a needle and thimble to thread stitch on the quilt. Some quilts involve hundreds of hours and thousands of stitches to create a unique patchwork quilt that will last for generations.
When you peruse our HOMEMADE QUILTS you are shopping for an item that tells a story and adds meaning to your bedroom! Discover more about our unique patchwork quilts and the stories behind them…
We have a lot of quilts! Want to see a gallery of the major patterns? Checkout our Common Amish Quilt Patterns.
Had you lived three centuries ago, you probably would not have owned an applique quilt unless you were very wealthy. These quilts are typically made with one large piece of fabric and decorated with time-consuming patterns, each of which must be stitched individually. Only the rich could afford the fabric and spare the free time for such a project.
As the Industrial Revolution slashed the costs of fabric in the 1800s, applique quilts became more popular among middle-class American women. Traditionally, young girls were supposed to make thirteen (a “baker’s dozen”) quilt tops before engagement, and then her family and friends might pitch in to help her finish them before the wedding. Twelve of these quilts were often pieced, made for anyone in her new household to use.
One “masterpiece” quilt, though, was reserved for the bridal bed, and young women would lavish their time and creativity on its design. Applique quilts were very popular for these special coverlets, with baskets of roses and wreaths of flowers rioting across their center and borders.
Another American tradition is the folk art quilt, which was often filled with plants, animals, people, or even words, all telling a story. Some even preserve history that may never have been recorded otherwise, as with Harriet Powers’ quilts. She knew slavery and racism, born in Georgia in 1837, but she used her needle to speak to a society that didn’t want to hear her voice. The Smithsonian displays her Bible quilt and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston displays her pictorial quilt, both of them preserving her bold and artistic storytelling.
Called a “charm” quilt in the late 19th century, young women collected hundreds of different fabrics from their family and friends. Perhaps if they collected 999 different squares, their true love would bring them the thousandth–and their happily-ever-after dream, too. One quilting blogger speculates that collecting these fabrics may have given girls opportunities to ask their love interest for a contribution!
The scrap quilt has also been called a “beggar” quilt, referring to quilters asking each other for contributions to their projects. Trying to put together a bedspread without repeating every fabric, they also called the quilts “odd feller” quilts–every piece was an odd feller. Some families recall their mother repeating one square, however, so that a child sick in bed might be entertained looking for the matching patches.
Still another name scrap quilts went by is the “postage stamp” quilt, so called because quilters would use their tiniest scraps, sometimes no bigger than a postage stamp. Perhaps the original motivation was not wasting the smallest piece (historians recall the scarcity of the Great Depression in this), but it also became a challenge at some point. Quilters would collect thousands of pieces to compete with each other in making stitched masterpieces.
Each and every step of the quilt-making process needs a certain lady's know-how. Each of our ladies specializes in either piecing or quilting. At the very least two ladies are included in making each quilt. The women that sew the tops together concentrate on assembling particular quilt patterns. Because each quilter's stitches differ, only one lady does the quilting per quilt. This system allows each woman to end up being an expert in her field.