It was expected in Grandma's day for a girl to have a quilt or quilts in her hope chest. Then it was important to keep a lot of quilts made when needed, to keep the family warm at night.
Pictured here is one of Grandma's babies, sitting in a warm, homemade comforter on a chair. This seems to be a popular way to photograph babies back then. These heavy, warm comforters seem to have been made from heavier men's clothing material.
Though this isn't the same comforter pictured above, it was one of Grandma's, and is made from heavy material, with thick cotton batting, and I think an old blanket was used for the backing. Talk about heavy, warm and toasty!
Here's a closeup of the arrangement of pieces in blocks. The comforter the baby is sitting on seems to be a 9-patch, while this one seems to be more of a 6-piece arrangement in each block, then put together with sashing of various kinds.
This shows a corner section of the back, showing what I'm sure is an old blanket of some kind. It's fairly worn in some places, especially on the edge. We used it a lot when I was growing up to put between bedsprings and the mattress to protect the mattress from the springs. Well, in the last few years I put a stop to that and it's retired to a careful rest.
This shows the hand stitching on the back edge - the top was simply folded over the edge and stitched to the back. You can also see the kind of yarn that was used to tie the comforter. In this case, Grandma used two colors for tying each knot.
Like I said, this combination of heavy fabric in the top, a heavy cotton batting, and a blanket for the backing makes this really warm. You pick it up in any way and it's definitely got some weight to it! It reminds me of an old comforter at a friend's house once. I think it might've been her husband's folks or something. It was a comforter that had a WOOL BLANKET for filling plus whatever other layers might've been in it - it was as heavy as lead! But it was sure warm, toasty sleeping. :)
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