Diamond Four Patch Postage Stamp Quilt

Diamond Four-Patch Postage Stamp Quilt

This quilt probably has a different name.  A classic Trip Around The World pattern is like this, but without the large diamonds.  I lost my notes about its provenance.  See how, over time, the black squares have shredded with wear and tear?  

In guestimating the age of a quilt, textile historians look at a couple of different factors.  This quilt was originally done all by hand and then finished or mended by machine.  When did women have time to do such intricate work?  We know that in the early 1940s,  World War II caused more women to enter the work force.  The checked calico bolt cloth is typical of those wonderful aprons and dresses of the 1930s and 1940s.    I'd tend to think that this was from the Depression Era, because I've compared it to Depression-Era quilts found on the internet.  You can research the quilts of a particular time by looking in Google Images. 

This quilt is lined not with cotton batting but rather with cotton flannel.  The back is plain muslin.  The binding is half-inch blue machine-sewn cotton fabric or binding tape which is cut on the bias for a smooth fold.  The quilting is in a 3-inch grid of double rows.  And even the filling has been hand-stitched together.  Use of consistent fabrics around the border tend to suggest that the quilter maker bought the border fabrics specifically for this quilt.

If some quilt historian would like to help me to refine the date of its construction, I would be happy to post up some pics of the details.