$695.00
Measures 98″ x 119″.
View our selection of Lancaster County quilts on our website or come visit our store located in the basement of Shady Maple Smorgasbord. Family Farm Quilts carries an excellent variety of handmade quilts made by local Amish and Mennonite women. This particular Mariner’s Compass queen-size quilt is the result of many hours of skilled labor. The center compass requires preciseness for the seams to lie flat. The border is scalloped and bears the initials and date. On a queen sized bed, there will be a drop of 19 inches.
Homemade quilts combine the warmth of a bed cover with a unique story told by the quilters from Lancaster County, PA. Every homemade quilt is as unique as the family, busy mother or Amish ladies group who uses a needle and thimble to thread stitch on the quilt. Some quilts involve hundreds of hours and thousands of stitches to create a unique patchwork quilt that will last for generations.
When you peruse our HOMEMADE QUILTS you are shopping for an item that tells a story and adds meaning to your bedroom! Discover more about our unique patchwork quilts and the stories behind them…
We have a lot of quilts! Want to see a gallery of the major patterns? Checkout our Common Amish Quilt Patterns.
The Mariner’s Compass quilt pattern has been known and loved among dedicated quilters, only the best of whom could manage the intricacies of stitching the precise points of the compass or star, as it was variously known. While most early quilts were simple, the Mariner’s Compass quilt was complex, and often was reserved for special occasions.
While other patterns may suggest a star pattern, the Mariner’s Compass name specifically refers to quilts in which the star radiates from a circular center. The roots of this pattern are hard to trace. Barbara Brackman writes of the many names used for this pattern, including The Explosion, the Merry Go Round, the Rolling Pinwheel, the Slashed Star–even Chips and Whetstones. Each name suggests what quilters saw as they stitched their quilt tops!
Quilt pattern books began to use the Mariner’s Compass name, widely accepted today, around the 1960s; its first published use was in 1929. Various historians, knowing the pattern’s popularity in the American northeast, have suggested that seafaring folk saw the compass rose on nautical maps and reproduced it on their blankets. The Pennsylvania Germans picked it up, adding brighter colors and patterns.