Dating a quilt -the floret hexagon quilt

This morning, my daughter and I had a bit of an interesting time.  I was telling her about finding out how old an actual quilt is.  There are clues left in a quilt with the pattern the fabrics and the style.  You sometimes can get confused when the quilt is made with really old fabrics that you cannot get an actual date for, but only a guess based on the mood of the fabric.  The guessing game goes on and on with debates about this and that.

There is also the possibility that the quilt was made by a person in a particular time period from their own stash, but there is also the possibility that it was made by another person 20-30 yrs later using the fabric found in the attic of the first person.  As well you can find a quilt in a quilter's house that was actually make by someone else altogether.  Unless you have someone who remembers watching a person actually making the quilt, there will always be a small piece of assumptions and doubt.  

We make assumptions to the best of our knowledge, based on the clues obtained during our observations and details given to both verbally or in writing.  When all is said and done the saying goes that a quilt is only as old as it's newest fabric.  This is true enough.  You cannot have made a quilt in say 1940 if the last fabric purchased was in 1980.  

That said though, there are some acceptable situations when it comes to older quilts, as long as the providence of the quilt is not misleading.  An example of this would be where a person has an old top, but would like to finish the quilt by having it quilted, so they can use or display it.  For the providence of this quilt, it is not wrong to say that the "top" was made in 19?? and later quilted in 19??.  The providence is really just the history of the quilt.  With the providence, the quilt will still hold it worth, based on the details.  To me and many others, a top is always better quilted in order to preserve the history and help halt the deterioration of the older fabrics.

This morning I was showing my daughter one of the hexagons that I took out of the floret hexagon quilt.  It looks like a piece of a comic book.  Another clue to look into to determine the age.  After examining the outer edge of the quilt, we found another piece actually the same as the one above.  Later we thought we hit the jackpot when I spotted this next hexagon with the month on it.  The excitement is building.  Unfortunately, there was no year on it though.  So we keep looking.

And we keep looking some more.  With the above hexagon paper found our interest was so heightened we could not stop.  Not much time pasted before my daughter exclaims she thinks she found a year.  We examine the paper and sure enough we find the year.  

We now know that no matter how old some of the fabric used to make this quilt are, the quilt itself was made in 1940.  Depending on how quickly the person made the quilt we don't know, but I can say that it would be fair to say that the quilt was made during 1940-1950.  How exciting!!!