2026, Family, home, Uncategorized

Quilts

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If the weather improves by Sunday, best friend/boommate will come for Easter dinner. She had been coming down from near Hutchinson almost weekly preparatory to moving in with us in May, bringing things she doesn’t need the moving company to transport.

Friend is a quilter. She has tons of fabric and sewing equipment the movers will load up and put in the very large and sunny room in our basement that will be her quilting headquarters. She has lots of projects underway, including a new quilt for our bed that we commissioned last year. She does really nice work.

I was making one of the beds yesterday and stopped to examine the quilt that I am using on it for warmth under the bedspread. You can see it in the header photo. It was made by my mother and her paternal aunts in the late 1930’s. It was made from any fabric they had on hand as well as worn clothing pieces. There was both machine and hand stitching on them . I wish I knew whose hand stitching it was, my mom’s or either Lena’s , Meta’s, Bertha”s, or Greta’s.

My mother had about four of these quilts and kept them in her cedar chest and never used them. She let me finally start using them about 30 years ago. We have two left. Friend has the opinion that quilts should be used, not stored, and if they wear out, you just make a new one. I agree with her, but it is pretty wonderful to have this 90 year old quilt to still use.

Know any quilters? What special quilts and textiles have you seen? What were your great aunts’ names?

21 thoughts on “Quilts”

  1. I know all(?) my great-aunts’ names so too many to list here, and have one set of quilts that was made by one of them when my mother was born, so those would be 90 years old. The little one was on my bed for most of my childhood.

    I really should think about the fate of the ancestral quilts. So much like that I finally have, just in time to think about how to pass it on.

    I suspect I may be the last to care for awhile.

    Sobering

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  2. Robin is a quilter, among other things, and has been making quilts off and on for the last fifty years. Because quilting is only one of several fiber art crafts in which she engages, she is not such a dedicated quilter that she has a long-arm quilting machine (or whatever it’s properly called) but she has substantial stores of fabric from which to draw and an extensive library of books about quilting for inspiration. During the Covid isolation, a site in Japan was auctioning kimono and other vintage Japanese garments and bolts of yardage, much of it quite striking. With my encouragement Robin acquired, really, a lifetime supply and since then has been fashioning quilts using some of those materials.

    We have acquired quilts throughout our marriage. In addition to ones Robin has made, we have picked up a few at estate sales. Robin has a crazy quilt made by her mother’s great aunt. We have several kantha quilts made from scraps of silk sari fabric that we picked up at Cultural Cloth in Maiden Rock, WI. We even have a tushki from Kyrgyzstan that is not a quilt but is a hand-sewn padded lining for a yurt.

    At least once a year we drive out to Cedarburg, Wisconsin to the Wisconsin Quilt Museum for a show. After visiting the quilt show we usually drive up to Sheboygan for the night. There are several things we like to do in Sheboygan, including the John Kohler Museum and Inklings bookstore.

    We have been talking about making a road trip this spring to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln Nebraska. It’s only an hour or so further than Sheboygan.

    I also have too many great aunts to mention. Big families in those days.

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  3. My mom’s mom made quilts, and I had one she had made for me when I was little… my mom was going to mend it when I returned to the Midwest, but she got confused and got rid of it. : |

    I have made a couple of quilts, one when Joel was a toddler and I was home-bound. Machine quilting only, and I learned from the first one to use fewer light neutral fabrics, and be bolder when choosing the colors.

    I remember my mom’s Aunt Ruth, who lived near Grandma – there were several others I vaguely recall meeting once, but didn’t get to know them.

    On dad’s side, there was Aunt Cora, and one other who I may remember before day’s end. And already gone when I was born was “Grandma” Duea, actually dad’s great aunt who had married a (much older) civil war veteran. There were stories about her…

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  4. I have the great aunt’s names from FamilySearch.
    Dad’s side: Hansine, Agnas, Dagmar, Mary.
    Mom’s side: Jane, Harriet, Anne, Effie, Phena, Marg, Cora, Sarah, Bertha, Edith
    I have no knowledge of quilting among them.
    There are just as many grand uncles.
    So many kids!

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  5. A good friend of mine is a quilter and makes quilts for his family members as gifts for special occasions (weddings, graduation, etc.) He made a mini quilt out of denim scraps for my cat, Margaux (dearly missed). It lined her cat bed and she loved it. I keep it to remind me of her.

    My mom has a quilt that three aunts made for her shortly after she was married, so it’s now about 70 years old. It’s made of clothing scraps and used to be on my bed when I was little. I loved looking at all the different colors and prints.

    The quilt got packed away for a long time but was unpacked a few years ago and is now folded across the back of a sofa. Mom loves looking at it and telling how her aunts made it for her and neither of her sisters got one (a bit of ancient sibling rivalry).

    There were lots of great aunts in my family, but I only remember a few by name. The ones that made the quilt are Theresa, Mary, and Clara. Aunt Clara was Mom’s godmother and she was very close to her. On my dad’s side of the family was Aunt Roseanna, my grandfather’s sister. She was a nun and lived out east, so we didn’t see her very often, but she wrote letters to us and was our main source of family history. She gave me a little book that was presented to her mother as a schoolgirl in Quebec as a reward for being a good student.

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  6. My mother made hundreds and hundreds of quilts all hand stitched. I have 22 here, along with a tablecloth and 5 wall hangings. They are kind of a burden to have right now. My daughter has a dozen and since she is a quilter, she, she wants no more. Her daughter has a few and has enough. My sister and her daughter have about 200.
    Great aunts. I have 7, all strong intelligent sometimes difficult women, all with names of the late 1800’s. My grandmother was the most difficult, Cleo. Why my mother gave her name to my sister remains a mystery. The only great aunt I knew was Hazel, farmer’s wife in SW Minnesota. Oops, I knew Ruby. She joined a new quirky church every couple years. Hazel and Milo. Ruby and Dewey. The quirky name business my mother dropped on me—Clyde.

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  7. Two of my great aunts, Annie and Amelia, were famous for getting into a hair pulling fistfight in a ditch in northwest Iowa, arguing about money and their inheritance after their mother died. I have a very nasty letter Annie wrote to her brother, my grandfather, again about money. Amelia was said to be the nastiest of the two, however.

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  9. Sandra, her best friend, and my sister are serious quilters. Sandra has probably made close to 100 in her lifetime. My sister got Sandra hooked on quilting decades ago. She now has a computerized long arm machine in her basement and started her own quilting business 3-4 years ago.

    We have a dedicated room in the basement for her machines, stash, cutting and ironing tables, hanging wall, and all the tools and supplies needed. Sounds very similar to Bill’s wife’s situation.

    I wish Sandra would give more away than she has. We probably have 30-40 in the house but use maybe 10 at any given time. Several are hanging on the walls for decoration. But she has made dozens for gifting to others, especially baby quilts or kids’ quilts.

    We’ve been to the national Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, several times. Many spectacular quilts there. Highly artistic. Also visited the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE.

    If sisters of grandparents are “great aunts” then I only recall Aunt Frannie on my dad’s side and Aunt Cora on my mom’s side.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  10. Lena. Meta, Bertha, and Greta were my maternal grandfather’s sisters. They were in constant conflict with my grandmother, who was an instigator of conflict I am sorry to say.

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  11. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I knew/know many quilters. My mother was really into it. In 209 I cleaned out her projects, her mother’s leftover projects, and her grandmother’s leftover projects. I have many here. My favorite quilt was the one she made my son with modes of transportation on it made out of scraps of our clothing. He still has it.

    Names? Genevieve, Mildred, Gladys, Stena, Mary, Hazelle, Lacy, Petra, Josie, Rose. Grandmas were Josephine and Fern.

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  13. I don’t know all my great aunts names but on dad’s side there were Minnie, Veona, Tess, and Alice. Mom’s side included Anna, Ellen, and Amy.

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  16. I know the subject is great-aunts, but I would be remiss if I did not also leave tribute to my dearly loved Aunt Arvilla, whose quilts covered the pews at her funeral. She also did the costume for the South Wind for Winter Carnival for many years.

    She passed her talent on to her daughters and her oldest has quite the studio with a long-arm machine.

    I wonder sometimes how I would have done with a mother who really encouraged me to sew.

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