January’s Heritage Quilt Collection

I confess, writing this blog post is mostly for my own benefit and satisfaction. A collective montage memorial of sorts, to more permanently honor, all together, these incredible pieces made by so many hands across the decades.

Admittedly, the time I take to document these collections is enormous. I haven’t been a responsible small business owner and calculated the time as a whole, but with the four-step photo process I confessed to having on Instagram yesterday (shooting the quilts on a bed, then on me, then hung on a wall, then extensive detailed shots of their flaws if any…) it is no wonder I can only manage one collection a month!
(I suppose another factor is that I have very rigorous standards for the quilts that end up on the website — ie: they pretty much have to be ones I have never seen before, are insanely beautiful or ones I borderline wanted to keep for myself…)
But I digress.

For those of you who are new here, at Folkling we curate quilts from the 1940s and earlier. I spend an extensive amount of time researching both the patterns and dates of our quilts. Because of this specific date range, you will rarely find machine quilting in our collections, and only natural batting such as cotton or wool (ie: no polyester)

This is an aspect of Folkling that has brought me so much joy over the last three years that I have been doing it and while I have spent over a decade of my life working in various fields of textile preservation and creation, if you’d told me five years ago I would become obsessed beyond reason with quilts and not only that but build a business around that obsession and appreciation… well let’s just say I didn’t see it coming.
I truly cannot imagine not doing this now though. The honor of helping educate people as to the history and value of these textiles is incredibly rewarding.

Perhaps I will expand upon those thoughts, and the origin story, another time.
Onto this months collection.

This January collection is in fact all one collection.
All of these quilts are from a prominent Fairfax Station, Virginia quilt collection that I was honored to have the opportunity to purchase.
The original owner kept these in pristine condition and indeed there are many in here that I have never seen the likes of before.

The following is an excessive photo dump that is, again, mostly for my own satisfaction and benefit.
For it really is true that the only way I can let the very best things go is by documenting them (albeit extensively)

Thank you all for taking the time to look at and appreciate these incredible works of art.

Now available in our brick & mortar and here online.