The Quilt That Took 50+ Years to Complete

Quilt on Chair
Originally uploaded by Rosellen's Flickr.

During the time that my family disassembled my Grandma H’s home, I found a treasure tucked away in the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser. It was a muslin bag containing beginnings of pieced quilts; I remember two partially completed projects, but there may have been other scraps as well. I showed my mother the pieces and she immediately recognized one of the panels as being constructed of fabrics of dresses that she wore during childhood and adolescence. My Grandma was the queen of recycling, and was adept at turning even chicken feed sacks into dresses for her daughters during the Great Depression. My mother dutifully continued that tradition; it was a longstanding joke in our four-girl family that if one of us was outgrowing a skirt, Mother would put a ruffle on it to yield a few more months of wear.

I was particularly charmed by the brightly colored 2” squares that comprised that piece; it wasn’t large enough to make into a quilt yet, but it was at least 3’ x 5’, which gave me enough fabric to conjure up various projects. My sister Marilyn, who’s a quilter, was able to identify many of the patterns as being popular in the 1930’s and 1940’s. That following Christmas I made throw pillows for Mother, Aunt BL and Marilyn with 8”x10” panels of the fabric, framed by polished cotton outer panels. My aunt, who didn’t know about my treasure, became tearful as she examined the old familiar fabrics on her pillow.

The second quilt top was an almost completed 9-square slate blue and white piece. It was full bed size, but it appeared that there was missing final fabric edging. Most curiously, it was constructed of a combination of recycled slate blue pieces that were frequently cut on the bias and/or had seams at oblique angles. There apparently had been enough blue and white polka dotted fabric to use at the edges, as that wasn’t pieced as strangely. Although I liked the color scheme, I had no idea what I’d do with the piece, so I stuffed it away in my stash to use someday.

Someday came at 2 a.m. yesterday. Awake on and off until then, I decided that it was time to use the blue and white pieced quilt top. Marilyn had emailed me the day before about a quilter’s association in Houston, Texas, that had put out a call to all quilters. It was a plea to send sheets, blankets, but most of all, handmade quilts to pass out to the displaced in shelters there.

As have most of us, I’ve been racking my brain to think of what I could do to help in the disaster down south. On Wednesday afternoon, as things started sounding more and more desperate in New Orleans, I decided that I should investigate the possibility of going down there to offer my nurse practitioner skills. I ran the idea by my manager and she was coldly impressed by the idea: “Who would take your patients? There’s no one extra in the department to pick up the slack, etc, etc, etc.” She obligingly said she’d run it by her manager, but I knew what the answer would be. That night on the evening news, I learned that our clinic/hospital was sending down an emergency response team, complete with 2 ER docs, 7 ER nurses, ER techs and an administrator. With them was a trailer for their lodging, a trailer holding supplies and a 3rd trailer containing equipment to set up a 90 bed field hospital. When I heard that, I felt that I was off the hook, professionally, at least for awhile. The next morning, before my manager could give me her answer, I told her that I was rescinding my request. After all, the last thing I want to do right now is lose my job, with one year to go before I retire.

So anyway, in the pitch black of Saturday morning, I had the lights blazing in my sewing room. I had to patch together remnants of 3 partially used sheets of polyfill for the batting, but I had a perfectly good bed sheet that I’d salvaged from Aunt A’s linen closet for the lining and edging. The quilt went together fairly easily, especially since I wasn’t aiming for perfection; imperfection, in fact, was a forgone conclusion, as the 9-patch sections had some wildly miscalculated seams.

By 10:30 a.m., it was finished: a quilt for a single size bed, just the right size for someone’s cot in Texas. I packed it up, along with 6 rarely used sheets, 3 freshly washed blankets, and my son’s favorite Sesame Street quilt from childhood. Because of the 3-day weekend, the boxes won’t be delivered until Tuesday, but there wasn’t an alternative.

On the back of the quilt, I stenciled the following note:

Top Pieced by
Elsie
Decatur, Illinois
Circa 1950

Quilt constructed by
her grandaughter
Rosellen
Champaign, Illinois
September, 2005