Thursday, March 11, 2010

Treasure Chest Thursday: A Patchwork Quilt Made by Grandma Moore


Unfortunately I have not had time lately to do daily posts for Lisa Alzo’s series “Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month” at The Accidental Genealogist, but several of them have definitely inspired me, so I’ll try to do some of the prompts when I can (out of order, of course).

For Treasure Chest Thursday as well as for my series “Please Keep These Things,” I would like to do Prompt #6: “Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.) If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother or grandmother, or aunt (a scarf, a hat, cooking utensil, furniture, etc.)”

The heirloom I am featuring is one of four patchwork quilts made by my grandmother that I inherited from my mother. I regret to say that only three of these quilts survive. I took the smallest one with me to college. Careless idiot that I was, at some point in college I washed and dried it at a laundromat – end of quilt. Had something like that happened today, I would try to get a professional to repair it for me, but unfortunately this did not occur to me at the time and I compounded my idiocy by throwing the ragged quilt away.

This quilt is the only one that is being kept out for display at the present time. The other two have been put away in a chest for the time being. There are still too many people and cats in this house to safely display all three quilts.

Grandma Moore, my mother’s mother, was an extremely skilled seamstress. My mother inherited her talents; I did not. Some of the quilts Grandma passed down to her children included the names of her children and grandchildren embroidered on some of the patches, so there is double genealogy relevance!

8 comments:

  1. How lucky you are to have these quilts. Hope to see the others, as I appreciate them, just can't do them. Nice colors as well.

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  2. What a great treasure! It can keep you warm in many different ways.

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  3. our satory about washing the quilt reminds me too of what i did to husbands grandmothers quilt. I had forgotten I guess the history of it. I had used and it seem so old and yellowed. I thought well mom always used bleach and I washed it and used extra bleach. And it was ripped here and there, mother in law thought my mom a quilter could fix it. Mom didn't want to try. So I guess i made it worse. I knew I had done something wrong as soon as sister-in-law got a look and asked me again what I did. Live and learn.

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  4. There is such love in those old quilts-I'm glad you've got a few of them.

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  5. Good to see there are other quilt lovers out there, and others who have, well, made a goof in the care and keeping of quilts and lived to learn from it. Now I have to figure out a way to safely display the other two. Thanks for stopping by!

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  6. Greta, I love quilts and this one is absolutely beautiful. Do you know what she used? Are the squares significant in any way? It's just gorgeous!

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  7. Lori - Grandma got the material she used from her daughters, daughters-in-law, and possibly some granddaughters - I remember my Mom saving up all her sewing scraps to bring with her next time we would visit Grandma. So the significance would be that most of these scraps would match items of clothing and other things sewn by family members. I always thought that was so neat.

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  8. That makes it all the more precious. Lucky you! :)

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