GUEST: My mother closed out her house a few months ago.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And, um, she gave this to me. It belonged to my great-grandmother, who made it.
APPRAISER: Wow. And what do you know about your great-grandmother?
GUEST: I know that she came from Czernowitz, which was the Austro-Hungarian Empire at one time.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And is now the Ukraine. She came to the United States in 1885.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And lived with her brothers in Philadelphia.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: And then she got married and moved with her brothers and her husband to Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, but she started this a year before she got married, I believe.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And then continued working on it for a few years after it. I know that my great-grandfather had some money at that time.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: Which would explain how she had time to work on this. (chuckles) Even though she had a couple small children. And that after this was done, a couple of years later, they pretty much lost all their money.
APPRAISER: Oh.
GUEST: And she never again had time to do this sort of work.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm. Well, it's a beautiful Victorian crazy quilt. We call it a crazy quilt because it doesn't have the regular pattern that we see in so many of the cotton quilts.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Either earlier or later. This one is dated 1891, January of 1891. The background silks are probably from dresses. The edging, possibly she purchased that, because you have a fairly uniform repeat...
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: ...on the, these sort of teardrop shapes on the edge. The spiderweb...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...is, is an unusual thing, no matter what. But the fact that it has a little Frozen Charlotte doll...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...trapped in the spiderweb just fascinates me. So I think that's really lovely. And right near you, that big spray of flowers coming down...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: They're wonderful because they're, they're raised up from the background, but then they also have the stamens, which are totally three-dimensional...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...and stick out from the quilt background. You've got some very unusual motifs in this. This one with a bug on it.
GUEST: I was wondering if that could have been hand-painted.
APPRAISER: I believe that one is painted and this one, as well, which is another bug.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And then...
GUEST: My favorite is that...
APPRAISER: The boot?
GUEST: Yes!
APPRAISER: Well, the boot is perfect because it's the, it's that time period, as well.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: So it, it's another thing that just ties in...
GUEST: Yep.
APPRAISER: ...with the time of the quilt. Her use of the colors is beautiful.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: I mean, it's really just lovely. The colors all work so well together. You do have a few condition issues.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: I think there's a few near you where the black silk has split. The other thing is, she never had time to finish it.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So you can see that the back has, is just the raw embroidery.
GUEST: Maybe that's when they lost their business.
APPRAISER: Or, or when she had children and just put it away thinking, "I'll get to it someday."
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: That does affect the value of it.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: But in this condition, with so many really unusual and charming motifs, I would put a retail value between $1,200 and $1,500.
GUEST: Very nice.
APPRAISER: If it had the back, you could double that.
GUEST: And of course, I'd rather keep it. It's just super-special to us.
APPRAISER: Yeah, it's a family treasure.
