Vintage 1950s Improvisational Strip Quilt – Hand Quilted Scrappy Patchwork Folk Art – 66 x 78

This is a lovely Improvisational Scrappy Strip Quilt that was assembled from a large assortment of mid-century scrap fabrics arranged in irregular strips, blocks, and pieced sections. Rather than following a conventional repeating quilt pattern, the maker worked intuitively with the available fabrics, creating a strongly improvisational composition.

The quilt contains an extensive variety of period textiles, including woven plaids and ginghams, striped shirtings, checks, small floral prints, feedsack-type cottons, novelty prints, dress fabrics, and solid cottons. Particularly characteristic of the period are the bright turquoise, green, yellow, red and pink fabrics, black-accented prints, strawberry novelty cotton, red star print, and numerous postwar plaids.

The different sections are separated by strips of printed and woven fabrics, including blue-and-white checks, florals, plaids, and narrow novelty prints. The result is a quilt that documents an unusually broad range of everyday American fabrics from the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The quilt is hand quilted, primarily in closely spaced parallel rows. The back is a light-colored woven cotton fabric with narrow dark vertical stripes while the binding is pale pink cotton that has been machine stitched to the front and handstitched to the back. The cotton batting is thin and lightweight.

CONDITION: The quilt is in excellent vintage condition and retains strong, varied color throughout the large assortment of fabrics. Please review the photographs carefully as they form an important part of the description.

It is a particularly strong example of mid-century American improvisational quilting, with an unusually extensive collection of period fabrics and a completely individual layout.

Details
* Pattern: Improvisational Scrappy Strip Quilt
* Date: Circa 1945–1955
* Size: 66” x 78”
* Construction: Pieced scrap quilt
* Quilting: Hand quilted in parallel rows
* Fabrics: Cotton prints, woven plaids and checks, shirtings, ginghams, novelty prints, florals, stripes and solids
* Backing: Light woven striped fabric
* Binding: Pale pink
* Style: Improvisational / folk art / utility quilt