Do you know what a bed turning is?  You’ll often find them at quilt shows.  A bed is piled high with quilts, and at a set time, the quilts are turned back one at a time to reveal the quilts underneath.  At the Northwest Quilting Expo, the Latimer Quilt and Textile Museum folks were there with a booth, and they did a wonderful bed turning of recent acquisitions.

But, before I show you the quilts from the bed, you must see this.  This balloon quilt is jaw droppingly amazing!  Each balloon bouquet has 23 circles the size of a quarter!  The “strings” are embroidered with different colors of floss.  Oh, I’d love to have a quilt like this.  I may have to learn to applique–and live to be 120 years old!

Most of the quilts on the bed were from the 1930′s, so you know I couldn’t resist.  I snapped away as each quilt was revealed, and now you can enjoy them, too.

Somehow, I didn’t get a full view of this quilt, but I did get a close-up of the block.  Aren’t the colors amazingly bright!?!

Here’s a pretty Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt top.

And speaking of bright, how about this tulip quilt?

The blue centers in this Dresden Plate Quilt made it a very pretty thing.

It was finished as a summer coverlet.  I love the edge treatment.

You don’t often see the yellow green in the center of the Dresden Plate blocks in 1930′s quilts.  The cross-stitch embroidery in the intersections was also unusual.

This star quilt appears to be from the 1940′s.

Here’s a pretty tulip variation.

I’m guessing this is an older quilt, but it’s so hard to say when the fabrics used were solids.

It’s always interesting when you find a quilt with some of the fabrics completely faded out, like this one.

The hummingbird pattern shown here is one of my favorites.  It’s on my list of quilts to make someday!

Whirligig is another quilt I really like–and would like to make!

My gosh, someone used orange in this quilt.  What a bold woman she must have been!

This is an interesting Nine-Patch variation.

I’ve seen lots of vintage quilts with this combination of lavender and yellow/orange.

Lastly, this variation of the Nosegay was very interesting.  I’d not seen it before.  Thanks, Latimer, for sharing with us.