What's in a Quilt

There are books on quilts. Quilts are displayed as art. Quilts have been used for warmth for hundreds of years. Quilts  marked the underground railroad route. There are people who devote their lives to designing and making quilts.

My mother was a quilter. From time to time, she was an avid quilter. She liked to visit fabric stores to examine bolts of new fabric. While there, she moved patterns and colors around as though she might go home and make a quilt in a day. The biggest problem she had was coming to terms with using a sewing machine to make a quilt.

To someone born in 1915, quilts had to be made by hand with needle, thread,and thimble. Anything less was cheating. CHEATING! For years, she would examine a quilt and then say, "That is not made by hand." For most of Margaret's quilts contained every stitch by hand.

Quite unintentionally, she left me two quilts to complete in her memory. One is a charm quilt top with over 1,000 tiny pieces  with every stitch sewn by hand. The complicated pattern flows in a zigzag with every fabric different. The other quilt was to be a family quilt with photos reproduced and sewn in fabric frames. All the squares are completed. And, wonder of wonders, it was pieced using a sewing machine.

One day I might get around to completing these two quilts. That's because my mother involved me in the process of selecting coordinating fabrics for the many quilts she made. This was part of our regular girl's day out. On a yearly basis, we had ideas and new fabric for at least ten new quilts. 

Mom never stopped signing up for quilting classes, even  though she knew how to make a quilt from A to Z on her own. In fact, she should have taught classes. She preferred showing up and socializing. She learned how to get out on her own and meet new friends. What better place to go than where people were involved in a mutual past time?

Mother often "got up" with her first cousin, Frances Fulmer. They'd go off to fabric stores and spend hours--looking around--fingering fabric--commenting on color and quality. Naturally, they returned with a stack of fabric, the amount of which was determined by whether or not there was a special "sale" or if they had to pay full retail. Nevertheless, their plans for new projects was greater than the price.

Then there was the time they traveled to a quilting class in Hilton Head, South Carolina conducted by a nationally known quilting celebrity. They got mileage out of meeting at least a hundred new quilters. Mom corresponded with many of them for years. They sent each other tiny scraps of fabric through the mail. Mom excitedly opened envelopes for weeks after the trip. She was busy for months reducing part of her personal stash to squares to send off as part of the swap. That's how she ended up with more than enough different pieces for the famous charm quilt.

There's a lot more to a quilt than a warm blanket. There is history. There is love. There is artistry. There is beauty. Most of all, there are memories. Some of my inherited quilts are nearly beyond repair because they are worn threadbare. Those are the ones my grandmother made in the late 1920s.They kept two generations of children warm and have sat on the shelf unused for at least ten years. The squares are not perfect,and the backing is faded.

One of my students saw this quilt and declared, "Look. Some of the squares are rough and some are soft. That must represent the hard times your grandmother went through. The pretty soft satiny squares must represent the good times."

Thinking back to the history of the late 1920s was clue enough to cause me to realize how that quilt represented the hard times, the days of the Great Depression. For I recalled how my mother always related how hard the depression was. There is not a doubt that the mismatched cotton fabric was the best that could be found at the time. It may be in tatters, but it shows how quilts pass down through generations in love and, at the same time, represent much more.  

Comments

[John T. Ruffin]

Date: October 28, 2009
To: Lynn Salsi
From: John T. Ruffin
Subject: Covered in Love

Your story about quilts awaken memories of growing up in rural Eastern North Carolina. I am from a very large family and forty years ago it was my parents, grandparents, and nine children all under the same roof. At times I jokingly call my family, " the African American Waltons," from the 70's television show, Walton's Mountain.

My paternal grandmother was the quilt maker in my family. She did not go out shopping for fabrics to sew. Most of her quilt making material consisted of old clothing and as you can imagine, with nine kids there was a lot. She would say, "her quilts are made out of us kids." My grandmother would make the entire quilt unassisted. Although my aunts often asked if they could help, they were more or less turned down. If it wasn't done by a sewing machine my mother wanted no part of it.

I can remember coming home from school and seeing grandma sitting in the corner of the room, with piles of patches all around her. She would look up, smile, say hello and then go back to her sewing. It seem as though it took her an eternity to finish one of those quilts. Once she was done, she would bring the entire family in and display the quilt. Some of them were very beautiful, but it's the warmth they gave me on cold winter nights that I remember most.

There is a lot of memories and love in those heavy, bulky quilts. Regardless of the weather, whenever I want to feel close to my grandmother (she died in 1995) I snuggle up in one of her quilts.

[cicicampearl]

Date: October 28, 2009
i know that day is billl gates's birthday :)

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