19-century hand quilting
I love hand quilted quilts. At the Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork there were plenty of them: old 19th century quilts, Amish quilts and modern quilts from Belgium, which looked like the old ones - with equally careful quilting.
In the oldest quilt shown - from 1750 - fabrics were damaged and you can see pieces of cotton batting:
However, some effects can not be obtained by hand quilting:
And here are quilts as everlasting living pieces of art:
19-century quilts were made from real scraps of fabric. Sometimes the scraps were too small and needed to be prolonged by other scraps:
Quilts were made in very large sizes (over 2 m x 2 m). The were hand quilted so there was no worry about the distance from a needle to the machine body. And besides, they were quilted by several women- during a quilting bees. Quilt tops were made from the pieced scraps of fabrics or applique:
