The Blockade Quilt

I love walking into my little sewing room and seeing a quilt in progress on the hoop stand, so right after finishing the pin basting of Campfire Memories for machine quilting (see my last post) I layered this queen size gem. This is a vintage top acquired from an online seller a couple years back.  It came from the estate of an Ohio Mennonite woman who was a prolific quilter in her day.  The seller called the pattern "The Blockade."

Several of the blocks were lightly penciled with the intended quilting design, and the white border was completely marked for quilting.

Fabrics making up the blocks are primarily mid-century prints, mostly floral with a few polka dots, stripes and geometrics thrown in.  I'm reminded of some of my mom's dresses and dad's pajamas when I look at these prints.

Here is the first day's quilting effort:

And progress as of this morning, after a couple weeks' work the central area is nearly half quilted:

The backing is a soft bleached muslin, in keeping with the era of the top, though the batting is a more modern Hobbs Polydown.  Thread is Coats 100% cotton 20 wt. hand quilting thread (pink spool). This will make a great summer quilt, and with luck it may be finished to go on the guest bed sometime this summer.
Summer seems a long way off, as we are still having snow showers every couple days, and there are forecasts for accumulating snow for Easter weekend.  On the bright side, there is a one-day warm up predicted for Thursday!    Hope springs eternal!