Grandma's Quilt

 My Paternal Grandma was a quilter. I mean a hardcore, full size, wood frame, hand sewn quilter. I remember as a kid in the 60s and 70s going to visit my Grandma in Somerset, Ohio, in her old boarding house on the main street to town. In her parlor was a very large quilt frame, at that time it looked huge to me. On the frame was always a quilt in the making. I imagined she had her friends over once a week to a quilting bee where everyone was talking and stitching.

I found this picture online and it closely resembled my Grandma's frame size. This was labeled as a Civil War style quilt frame. It is made with a wood frame and held together with wood C clamps. I don't remember Grandma's frames construction, but I do remember that it was very large.

Grandma's quilts were always in our house when I was growing up. I had one on my bed growing up and took it with me when I moved to my first apartment. That quilt moved with me to California as a newly wed, then to Indiana, Virginia and Texas. This quilt was machine washed so many times that it became thread bare. Then about 35 years ago, or longer, I packed it away in a trunk with all my treasures.

A few months ago I decided to frame some crafts and mementos from the women in my life. Mine and my husband's mother, and grandmothers are represented. So, my husband went into the attic, and into the trunk to retrieve the quilt. Boy was it in bad shape. At that point I had to decide if I was just going to pack it back up, or cut it to make something special out of it. I consulted my sisters, my sounding board, and they encouraged me to make something out of it that I can pass on to my kids and grandkids.

My Grandma's Quilt

I took this quilt out of it's plastic covering that is had been in for over 35 years in a trunk. It was really stained and dirty, so I soaked it in my washing machine with Oxi Clean and Tide for hours. I then washed it on the delicate cycle, and dried it at low heat. When it was as clean as it was going to get, I spread it out on my craft room floor. Then I went over it inch by inch to see the condition of this special quilt. Sadly, the quilt was in bad shape and thread bare in many sections. Being able to see all the hand stitches and designs up close was amazing. Along with the patchwork patterns. Grandma's quilt had nine sections of patchwork squares, and down the columns and rows of these sections are hand stitched stems with leaves ending in each corner with a hand stitched daisy like flower. The quilt is trimmed in blue fabric and then quilted in each square with a double X. In one of the corners was an embroidered "S" for my Family's last name. 

My Grandma embroidered our last name initial in the corner of the quilt.

In between each patchwork square was a daisy like flower and a stem with leaves coming out in all four directions. This stitching patterned was the trim for all the patchwork squares.

In the picture you can see the X quilting on each patchwork square. There are squares of different color, separated by cream square,s and all were quilted with the X.

Cutting that quilt was one of the hardest things I have ever done. First, I cut out the Embroidered "S" so I could frame it. Next, I went though and picked the sections that were in the best shape. I decided to make a pillow using different section of the quilt. Some of the cut sections needed to be mended, so I zigzag stitched with my sewing machine on some spots that were thread bare.

This is a example of my zigzagging the quilt to strengthen it a bit.

As I was going through the quilt and cutting out sections I saw some stitching that looked like the letter g along one of the edges. At first I thought it was for my grandma's name, Grace. Instead it was the number 9. Looking closer it was a date, 1934. I started tearing up and felt very grateful I had not cut through it. The date stitching was done with cream thread on cream fabric, so it was very hard to see. Now, I was meticulously going around the edges to make sure I didn't miss anything else. Lo and behold, at the bottom of one of the stems is another date, 1928.  Now I needed to figure out what these dates meant.

This date "1934" was along the trim of the bottom of the quilt.

The date "1928" is above the shadow in the picture. I was located above one of the flowers.

The framed cut date pieces of Grandma's Quilt

The framed embroidered S from Grandma's quilt

I was doing some research online and found a website Sherriquiltsalot.com and she had a post on labels on quilts. She recommends you label your quilt with your name, location, date started and date ended. Also, she talks about a fellow quilter who free hand stitches her name, and dates into the boarder. Sound familiar? I am certain that my Grandma stitched her label into the boarder of her quilt. Her initial in the corner, her start date of 1928 and her completed date of 1934. Mystery solved!!

Now, I am wondering why it took her so long to complete this quilt. My grandparents bought a farm in the late 1920's, and I would guess that when the Great Depression started in 1929 she was a bit busy trying to survive. The quilt may have just had to take a back seat to working the farm. She had two young sons at the time and I am sure they were struggling as a family. I know my Dad hated talking about those years. He felt like he lost his childhood because of the farm work. He was not a happy farmer. So, maybe life just got in the way of her quilting, or she put it away to make other quilts that did not require as much work. Or, maybe she helped other friends finish their projects. We will never know for sure, but the timing of the Depression and the long gap in the dates on the quilt makes sense to me.

In my mind I solved this mystery. Now, back to my project. I cut the dates from the quilt and framed them to hang in my craft room. I sewed the many acceptable cut quilt pieces together into a large piece to make a pillow. I then cut the large Frankenstein piece into a rectangle. I folded it in half to make a square and sewed the sides and half of the top closed.  I stuffed the square, sewed the top closed and now it was a heirloom pillow. 

You can see all the pieces of Grandma's quilt that have been sewn together to make this one pillow. 

This is the other side of the pillow.

 I had a large quilt piece that included four corners of each large patchwork square that had  a daisy in the middle.  I used some light blue thread and stitched the piece to highlight the petals of the daisy, and sewed a blue button in the middle of the flower. I had some patchwork denim fabric I used to frame the quilt piece, and to also use for the back of the pillow. Another cute heirloom pillow!

The embellished quilt daisy from Grandma's quilt 

The back of the Daisy pillow

One of my sisters did not have a Grandma quilt, so I sent a few cut pieces for her to frame. Now, I have three framed pieces, the embroidered "S" and the two dates, a pillow made completely out of quilted pieces and an embellished pillow. I also have all the left over cut quilt that I have no idea what I am going to do with.

 At least not yet!