Quilters are, by nature, collectors. A bag of scrap fabric, a box of cherished baby's clothes or little girl's dresses, grandma's old handkerchiefs, a fabriholic's stash.....eventually these collections are brought together in the quilt.
It's obvious that this natural tendency often leads to starting a quilt collection, but the barrier to many a quilt lover is the high price tag on antique and collectible quilts.
Amish quilts, the current rage of American quilt collecters, are usually priced in the $500 to $1500 range. A tour of quilt dealers online reveals prices on American quilts, dating from 1880 to the present, range from an affordable $150 to a staggering $1600; the average price seems to be about $500-600. Quilts made before 1850 are hard to find and priced accordingly.
Besides the price barrier to starting a quilt collection, a novice collecter may find few antique quilts of quality are available. The best quilts are usually kept as family heirlooms; on rare occasions, these choice pieces make it to the marketplace only to be whisked away by canny antique dealers.
Collectors, take heart! There are plenty of wonderful quilts out there that dealers turn their backs on and quilt collectors poo-poo. Even compiled with a small budget, a thoughtful collection would be highly valued in the next generation.
One often-overlooked quilt-type is the polyester quilt. The first polyester quilts appeared in the 1960's with the advent of the new fabric. The practical housewife found this quilt to be a joy: easy to wash and dry in her home machine, the quilt showed little or no wear or fading after umpteen washings.
Perhaps because of its recent introduction into the marketplace, collectors and dealers dismiss the polyester genre as collectibly worthless. Consequently, many, many beautiful polyester creations are easy to find and relatively inexpensive. Prices as low as $25 to $50 are not unusual for nice quilts in good condition.
Besides polyester quilts, an economical collector should be conscious of social trends when investing in recently-made quilts. For instance, a 1960's quilt featuring the trademark "psychedelic" patterns of the decade might be more valuable than a traditional-style quilt made in the 1960's.
Another wise purchase might be a patriotic theme quilt from the Bicentennial. Many quilts have been made in memory of AIDS victims and are sure to be more valuable in time as will quilts on environmental themes, New Age quilts, and minority awareness quilts, all hallmarks of these modern decades.
In other words, by taking advantage of the current biases of quilt dealers and collectors for traditional patterns and cotton fabrics, a thrifty investor can put together a striking alternative collection of beautiful, affordable quilts that are currently being ignored.