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!