Some Eye Candy to start the week!!

Last week during my studio clean-up, I was reminded that this quilt needed a couple small repairs.  I had marked them with safety pins and after I finished, I spread it out on my bed to go over it to look for any spots I might have missed. 

Sometime in the 80's my maternal grandfather asked my mother to quilt it saying it was pieced by my her mother -- probably in the late 30's or early 40's.

It's the only quilt attributed to my grandmother that I've ever seen -- were there more? 

My mother and her 5 sisters were all able to point out fabrics they remembered from their dresses.  I'm trying to picture myself in a dress made from one of these two -- perhaps that's why mom and her sisters were such tough women -- it would take a special kind of grit to wear that dress to school!

I am the exact middle grandchild -- 9 out of 19 -- and we lived the farthest away from my grandparents.  Grandma died when I was 14 and so I don't have too many memories of her except the food that she served anytime we went for Sunday dinner -- homemade bread, chunky applesauce, and orange cookies!!  The one interaction I recall is that she was quite upset with me the afternoon I occupied myself by "painting" the side of her house with unopened buds from her iris.  I bet you didn't know that a dark purple iris bud will make quite a lovely streak on white clapboard siding.  Thinking about that, I wonder which upset her more -- that I was picking off the iris buds or that I was defacing the house?  (I wasn't old enough to know better, no matter what anyone says!!)

This time when I opened out the quilt, the dark blue prints caught my eye for the first time -- not the placement so much, but those fabrics are from the 1890's -- to me that says they might be scraps from my great-grandmother's scrap bag rather than my grandmother.  I have this vague recollection that great-grandma Thome lived with my mother's family at the end of her life so perhaps both of them worked on it.  Hmmm? 

I remember helping my mother get the quilt into the frame and I know it was machine pieced.

To me it's an endlessly interesting quilt to look at -- all the funky fabric combinations and the charming prints.  Some blocks are so coordinated while others are a source of endless wonder.  If both of my grandmothers worked on the piecing -- was one a control freak and the other carefree?

And why didn't they teach my mother to make quilts?  Mom and I started quilt making together in the early 1970's . . . . although at the end of her life, she told everyone "I taught Mary everything she knows" when people would remark to her about my gift for quilt making.

Now that I've put a few of my own stitches into the quilt, I think I'll sleep under it when the weather cools off -- do some bonding with my mothers and their stitching!

Mary Huey
www.maryhueyquilts.com