27 Quilts Worth More Than the Tag

Quilts turn up folded on card tables at estate sales, stuffed into cedar chests at auctions, and draped over thrift store sofas with a price sticker pinned to one corner. Most sell for the cost of a new blanket, and plenty deserve exactly that. 

A few carry clues in their fabric, stitching and pattern that point to a maker, a region or a decade collectors pay real money to own. Reading those clues takes good light, a little patience and a willingness to turn the quilt over. 

The back often says more than the front.

Lancaster Amish Center Diamond Quilts

Amish quilts made in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, from roughly the 1880s into the 1940s rank among the most studied American textiles, and the Center Diamond is their signature layout. Look for solid fabrics only, never prints, in deep plum, green, blue and red, often in fine wool rather than cotton. 

The quilting is usually far denser than the simple piecing suggests. Moth damage and fading hurt value, and later cotton-polyester versions made for tourists are worth a fraction of prewar wool examples.

Midwestern Amish Quilts With Black Grounds

Amish families in Ohio and other Midwestern settlements pieced quilts that look quite different from their Lancaster cousins. These makers favored more complex block patterns, such as Bear Paw and Nine Patch variations, often set against black backgrounds that make the jewel tones glow. 

Cotton sateens and, later, synthetic blends crept in over the twentieth century, so fabric content helps with dating. An early cotton example with tight hand quilting and deep, unfaded color draws strong interest, while late polyester pieces rarely do.

Gee’s Bend Work-Clothes Quilts

The quilters of Gee’s Bend, a small African American community in a bend of the Alabama River, became art-world news when their work reached the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2002. That exhibition, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Tinwood Alliance, showed improvised layouts built from worn denim, corduroy and shirting. 

Quilts linked to known Gee’s Bend makers can bring serious sums, but provenance is everything. An unsigned improvisational quilt from rural Alabama is not automatically a Gee’s Bend piece, so family history and paperwork matter.

Hawaiian Applique Quilts

Hawaiian women encountered quilting after American missionaries arrived aboard the Thaddeus in 1820, and they turned it into a distinct tradition called kapa kuiki. The classic design is a single large motif, often breadfruit or another plant, cut from folded fabric like a paper snowflake and applied onto a contrasting ground. 

Rows of echo quilting ripple outward from the design in even lines. Older two-color examples, especially red or green on white, are the ones collectors chase, and stained or faded pieces lose much of that appeal.

Baltimore Album Quilts

Made mostly in the 1840s and 1850s in and around Baltimore, Maryland, these album quilts combine dozens of elaborately appliqued blocks, each with its own wreath, basket, eagle or building. Many were group efforts, with blocks made and signed by different women and assembled as a gift. 

The best examples use crisp red and green fabrics with fine inked details. Genuine period Baltimore album quilts are museum material, so anything resembling one at a sale deserves a careful look at fabrics, ink and hand stitching before anyone dismisses it as a later copy.

Chintz Broderie Perse Quilts

Before printed cotton became cheap, quiltmakers stretched expensive imported chintz by cutting out individual birds, flowers and trees and appliqueing them onto a plain ground. The technique, later called broderie perse, flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mostly in well-off coastal families. 

These quilts often use a central medallion framed by several borders. Glazed chintz loses its sheen with washing, and the dark brown dyes of the period tend to weaken the cloth over time, so pieces with intact dark prints are well worth noticing.

Trapunto White Work Quilts

All-white quilts with raised designs, known as white work, were a showpiece of needle skill in the decades around 1800. Makers outlined grapevines, urns and baskets in fine stitching, then worked extra cotton or cord into those shapes from the back, a method called trapunto. 

Holding the quilt up to a window reveals the stuffed areas as darker shapes against the light. Stains and yellowing can often be improved by a textile conservator, but tears in the thin fabric are much harder to fix, so condition drives the price.

Red and Green Floral Applique Quilts

From about the 1840s through the 1870s, red and green floral applique on a white ground was among the most fashionable choices for a best quilt. Rose of Sharon, Whig Rose and Princess Feather are common patterns. 

The greens deserve a close look, because many were made by overdyeing yellow with blue, and those greens often faded unevenly toward blue or tan. A quilt whose greens have shifted still has value, but one with crisp original color, fine hand applique and close quilting stands well above the average.

Double Pink Prints

Double pink is a fabric rather than a pattern, a small-scale print in two shades of pink that turned up constantly from the mid-1800s into the early 1900s. Spotting it helps place a quilt in the nineteenth century. It often appears alongside brown, chrome yellow and indigo prints in scrappy stars and Nine Patch blocks. 

A quilt full of clean, bright double pinks with good hand quilting is a far better find than one made from modern reproduction prints, which usually feel stiffer and show flatter, more uniform color.

Cheddar Orange Pennsylvania Quilts

Cheddar is the quilt collector’s word for a strong, solid orange-yellow that shows up heavily in Pennsylvania quilts of the later nineteenth century. Pennsylvania German makers in particular paired it with red and green in bold geometric and appliqued designs. 

Cheddar backgrounds and bindings make an ordinary pattern look dramatic, which is exactly why buyers go looking for them. Check for even color on the front and back, because a quilt faded to pale yellow on one side has lost much of the punch that makes these pieces desirable.

Indigo Blue and White Quilts

Indigo was the dependable blue of the nineteenth century, prized because it held its color through years of washing. Blue and white quilts in patterns such as Drunkard’s Path, Irish Chain and Robbing Peter to Pay Paul have long appealed to collectors and decorators alike, which keeps demand steady. 

Small white dots or figures on indigo grounds are a classic period look worth recognizing. By the early 1900s simpler vat-dyed blues were taking over, so deep, slightly uneven indigo generally points to an older quilt.

Feedsack Quilts

Flour, sugar and animal feed once came in printed cotton sacks, and thrifty families turned that cloth into dresses, aprons and quilts. Decorative sacks appeared in the 1920s, but colorful prints spread widely in the late 1930s and peaked during World War Two. By 1937 federal rules had standardized sizes, with a 100-pound sack measuring 39 by 46 inches. 

A line of tiny perforations along one edge, or the faint ghost of a printed brand name, can confirm the source, and many so-called Depression quilts actually date from the 1940s.

Grandmother’s Flower Garden Hexagons

Grandmother’s Flower Garden arranges rings of hexagons around a center piece, and the pattern peaked in the 1920s and 1930s with yellow centers, pastel petals and green paths. The technique is much older, since hexagon quilts appeared in America around 1800 and instructions ran in Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1835. 

Makers wrapped fabric around paper templates, and some tops still hold those papers inside. Old letters, catalog pages or newspaper scraps used as templates can help date a piece, making an unfinished top with papers intact surprisingly interesting.

Double Wedding Ring Quilts

The Double Wedding Ring pattern was first published in the United States in the early 1920s and became a Depression favorite, partly because its curved arcs used up small scraps. Curves are harder to piece than straight seams, so a flat, well-matched example signals a skilled maker. 

Look at where the arcs meet the small corner squares, since puckers and misaligned points are the usual weakness. Good 1930s examples in bright prints on white or pastel grounds are steady sellers, and scalloped edges that follow the rings add appeal because they take extra work.

Sunbonnet Sue Blocks

Sunbonnet Sue, the faceless girl hidden under a big bonnet, traces back to the Sunbonnet Babies drawn by Bertha Corbett, whose first book about them appeared in 1900. Marie Webster brought the figures to quilters through Ladies’ Home Journal in 1911 and 1912, and the pattern boomed during the Depression. 

The applique figures are usually outlined in black blanket stitch. Careful hand embroidery and period print dresses add value, while machine-appliqued versions from later decades draw far less attention from collectors.

Log Cabin Quilts

The Log Cabin block, built from strips arranged around a center square, appears in written records by 1863, when a Cleveland quiltmaker won recognition at the Ohio State Fair. It became a major fad from the 1870s into the early 1900s. Many were sewn onto foundation squares, which let makers use thin silks and wool blends. 

Settings such as Barn Raising and Sunshine and Shadow change the look dramatically. Red centers are often said to represent the hearth, but early instructions also called for black, so center color alone proves little about age.

Redwork Embroidered Quilts

Redwork quilts are made of white blocks embroidered in outline stitches with red thread, a style that relied on colorfast Turkey red floss and stayed popular from the late 1800s into the 1920s. Preprinted muslin squares sold for a penny, earning the name penny squares, and designs ran to children, animals, kitchen tools and later state birds and flowers. 

Blocks showing dated events, nursery rhymes or famous figures help narrow the age. Red thread that has faded or migrated into the white cloth lowers value, so crisp stitching matters.

Signature and Friendship Quilts

Signature quilts, with names inked, stamped or embroidered on the blocks, appeared in the 1830s alongside the fashion for autograph albums. Some were farewell gifts, others were church fundraisers where people paid to have names added, and a few carry hundreds of signatures. 

Names and a town make these quilts researchable, and a documented tie to a local family or congregation raises interest sharply. Some early inks were harsh on cotton, so signatures that have browned or eaten into the fabric are damaged, but also a sign of real age.

Antique Crib Quilts

Small quilts made for cradles and cribs are scarcer than full-size ones, largely because they were washed and used until they wore out. That scarcity, plus their easy display size, makes a genuine nineteenth-century crib quilt one of the more valuable finds at a sale. 

Check the scale of the pattern, because a true crib quilt has blocks sized for the small format. Many so-called crib quilts were cut down from worn full-size quilts, which shows up as blocks chopped off at the edges and a noticeably newer binding.

Kansas City Star Pattern Quilts

From 1928 to 1961, the Kansas City Star newspaper published quilt block patterns for readers across the Midwest, and many farm families built quilts from them. Several blocks carried topical or regional names, which helps link a quilt to that source. 

A quilt matched to a Star pattern, especially with a clipping or family story attached, gives buyers a documented period and place. Quilt historian Barbara Brackman has published lists of the Star blocks, and examples in original prints with fine hand quilting tend to outsell generic scrap quilts.

Mountain Mist Pattern Quilts

Beginning in 1929, Stearns and Foster of Cincinnati printed free quilt patterns inside the wrappers of its Mountain Mist cotton batting, and the company eventually offered more than 130 designs. Many are distinctive applique patterns found nowhere else, so matching a quilt to a numbered Mountain Mist design is a useful identification tool. 

Original wrappers are collectible in their own right. A finished quilt made from an early pattern, in period fabric with the batting still soft and even, is a solid find, particularly for the less common designs.

Sears Century of Progress Quilts

For the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, Sears, Roebuck and Company ran a quilt contest that drew more than 24,000 entries and offered a $1,000 grand prize. Many entrants made special quilts for the event, and some built their designs around the fair’s Century of Progress theme. 

Quilts with a documented contest connection, such as a surviving entry tag or letter, are rare and prized by quilt historians. Values depend heavily on documentation and condition, and even a modest entry with its paperwork can bring far more than an anonymous quilt of the same age.

Paragon and Other Kit Quilts

Kit quilts, sold with prestamped or precut fabric, were a big business from about the 1920s onward, with names such as Paragon Needlecraft, Bucilla and Progress. The easiest tell is a stamped blue line, since kits typically marked both the applique outlines and the quilting design in blue. 

Faint blue marks still visible near the stitching point to a kit rather than an original design. Well-made kit quilts in unfaded pastels have a steady following, and an unused kit with its instructions and packaging can be worth more than a sloppily finished quilt.

Unquilted Quilt Tops

A pieced top without batting or backing sells for less than a finished quilt, but old tops can still be worth more than a thrift store tag suggests. Many were set aside when a maker died or moved, and the fabrics inside may be decades older than the price implies. 

Check for hand piecing, period prints and seams that lie flat. Finishing an antique top with modern quilting usually lowers its collector value, so history-minded buyers keep them as found, while decorators happily pay for tops with strong color and good condition.

Hand Quilting Stitch Density

Hand quilting leaves short, slightly uneven stitches, while machine quilting produces a continuous, perfectly regular line. Collectors often count stitches per inch, and eight to twelve small, even stitches per inch across a quilt signals a practiced hand. Long-arm machine work usually shows repeating allover patterns that ignore the piercing. 

Close, elaborate hand quilting in feathers, cables or crosshatching adds real value, whereas sparse ties or long, wide stitches suggest a utility quilt made for everyday warmth rather than for show.

Machine Stitching on Antique Quilts

Machine stitching does not automatically mean a quilt is modern. Elias Howe patented his sewing machine in 1846, improved machines spread quickly in the following decades, and many Victorian quiltmakers proudly used them for piecing, bindings and even quilting. A quilt with a machine-sewn binding and hand quilting may still be well over a century old. 

The better clue is the combination of fabric, thread and batting, since cotton batting with seeds or uneven thickness tends to indicate an earlier date than thin, uniform polyester batting.

Cheater Cloth Imitations

Printed fabric designed to look like patchwork, often called cheater cloth, has been around far longer than most buyers realize. Pretend patchwork prints were popular in the 1830s and 1840s, and the Cocheco Manufacturing Company printed a celebrated patchwork design around the 1876 Centennial Exposition. 

To spot it, look for seams, since cheater cloth has none, and check whether the pattern repeats identically across the surface. A quilt made from it is worth less than true patchwork, though a well-preserved nineteenth-century cheater print still interests fabric collectors.

Reading Cloth Like a Document

A quilt’s value rarely sits in the pattern alone. It comes from the combination of fabric, stitching, region and whatever can be proven about who made it and when. Two quilts can look nearly identical from across a room and be worth wildly different amounts up close.

That gap between appearance and evidence is where sale-table bargains live. Price tags are usually set by someone judging size and cleanliness, not dye history or stitch counts. Anyone willing to flip a quilt over, check the seams and study the prints holds an advantage over whoever wrote the tag.

More from Home As We Make It

• 18 Affordable Places to Retire in the U.S.
• Antique Glassware That’s Worth Collecting
• Stay-At-Home Jobs That Actually Pay
• 18 Forgotten Snacks from the ’80s and ’90s
• 20 Things That Make a House Look Cleaner Than It Is

Like Home As We Make It‘s content? Follow us on MSN.