Week 24: Handed Down
Things get handed down--pictures, plates, photos--and stories get handed down--we were pilgrims or pioneers or patriots!--but we all know, some things, like truth, get lost in the transmission. Sometimes the truth is deliberately misplaced. Between my mother who felt the past was just over, and my father who had some unhappy secrets, not many stories got handed down to me, and most of the "things" went to other family members as we moved around too much for sentimental storage.
What did come to me were three quilt tops that have never been finished. Judging by the fabrics, they were probably made in the 30s and maybe the early 40s, but the two probable quilters were both dead by 1944 and one of them was essentially blind, so I expect the bulk of the work was done in the 1930s. When my mother's sister gave them to me in the mid 1990, she told me that it was possible that these had been made by my father's mother, Olive Prewitt, but the other possibility, the one I judge more likely, was that they were pieced by my mother's grandmother, Metta McDuff. Because one married young (Metta was 15 and gave birth to my grandmother the following year) and the other was on a second marriage (Olive was about 27 when she married my grandfather, and was 32 when my Dad was born), they were only four years apart in age, though different generations! Anyway, my aunt gave me these quilt tops mostly because I was the only quilter in the family. I've never done anything with them but store them because the handwork was so perfect that I hated to hide those stitches inside a quilt sandwich. At least 80 years later, the fabrics and stitches still hold, a happy accident of storage inside various trunks.
What did come to me were three quilt tops that have never been finished. Judging by the fabrics, they were probably made in the 30s and maybe the early 40s, but the two probable quilters were both dead by 1944 and one of them was essentially blind, so I expect the bulk of the work was done in the 1930s. When my mother's sister gave them to me in the mid 1990, she told me that it was possible that these had been made by my father's mother, Olive Prewitt, but the other possibility, the one I judge more likely, was that they were pieced by my mother's grandmother, Metta McDuff. Because one married young (Metta was 15 and gave birth to my grandmother the following year) and the other was on a second marriage (Olive was about 27 when she married my grandfather, and was 32 when my Dad was born), they were only four years apart in age, though different generations! Anyway, my aunt gave me these quilt tops mostly because I was the only quilter in the family. I've never done anything with them but store them because the handwork was so perfect that I hated to hide those stitches inside a quilt sandwich. At least 80 years later, the fabrics and stitches still hold, a happy accident of storage inside various trunks.
I feel fortunate that there are a number of quilters in my family and further back. I do have one quilt from my grandmother that I treasure
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother (daughter of the probable quilter here) tried to teach me a little bit about quilting, and had me handsewing four-patch squares when I was probably 11 or maybe a bit younger. I turned them into a little pillow and my grandma used it to lean on when reading for the rest of her life. I still have that pillow, albeit a little tattered (Grandma died in 1969!). The only quilt I know of that Grandma made herself was a tied quilt that all of us grandchildren slept under, eventually wearing it out.
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