Quilting: Paper Pieced Quilts of the 1940's!

Once in a long while I come across a true treasure while searching for old quilts, vintage fabrics and feed sacks from the 1940's. This scrap or string quilt (top), made from a combination of vintage cotton and feedsack cloth scraps, is an ideal example of the newspaper-piecing techniques used by quilters during the WWII era. In order to use the smallest of scraps saved from much-loved fabrics, quilters made “string quilts” by sewing scraps together using newspaper for a foundation.

It was particularly exciting to find that the newspaper in this quilt was still attached and intact when I discovered this unique piece of history. Look at the headlines: Single Bomb Wrecks Whole Greek Harbor, and Pepper Urges Military Action To Check Axis. The news piece includes the following WWII information: "President Roosevelt met for an hour and a half with his principal advisors on defense and was believed to have discussed the probability of speeding the production of bombing planes."

In the newspaper folds of this unique quilt, you may also be able to see the ad which states that girls' percale dresses sizes 7 - 14, regularly priced at $.66, are on sale for $.33. Now that was a bargain even for the times!

It's not every day I find a quilt quite as exciting and unusual as this one, but there's always the possibility of finding another true treasure. Surely that's what keeps me going back again and again to those wonderful antique malls in the midwest! Never know what I might find!