My "Keeping Quilt"

One summer day when I was a teenager, I went over to my Grandmother’s house to help her cut fabric scraps for a crib-size quilt. She explained to me how this quilt would be constructed by sewing strips of fabric onto triangles of white fabric. Then the triangles would be sewn together into blocks and then the blocks would be sewn together. I remember watching as she selected a fabric for the first strip and then choose a coordinating fabric for the next strip and the next—all from boxes of scraps—until she had the triangle filled with fabric, and then she started a new triangle. Because my Great-Grandmother, who was in her late 90s at the time was going to piece the quilt on her treadle sewing machine, Grandmother and I pinned the fabric to the triangles to be sewn later.

We worked together, happily coordinating and cutting fabric until we noticed smoke billowing from my parents’ farm less than a mile away. I don’t remember whether my mom called me, or whether I called her to see what was happening, but I did go home hurriedly because a huge wagon load of straw that my one of my older brothers was driving home from another farm had caught on fire just before he got home. It was an action-filled afternoon of my mom first spraying my brother with water from the garden hose to keep him cool while he unhooked the wagon tongue from the tractor so that he could move it to safety, and then all of us watching the fire department put out the large fire.

And I didn’t get back to Grandmother’s house that day.

She finished cutting the strips of fabric and pinning them to the triangles and took them to her mother to piece together. After her mother pieced the fabric scraps together, Grandmother added the batting and the backing and hand-quilted it and gave it to me.

The next time that I visited my Great-Grandmother to thank her for sewing the fabric together for the quilt top, she said to me: “Marilla, that quilt is to be used. It is not for display.” And so I have tried to honor that over the past 25 years. At first, I kept it as a top layer on my bed. Over the next couple of decades, I stored it in my cedar chest or kept it out for use, depending on whether I had a place that I could use it without being concerned about damage from sunlight, etc. Last year, I got it out of my cedar chest to use as a throw on the couch. Emma, our younger daughter, then adopted it as her own and wanted to be wrapped up in it every night. She now calls it “my quilt” even though I moved it back out to the living room after I made her this linen blanket to be wrapped in every night.

Last fall, one of the books that we read for homeschool was The Rag Coat by Lauren A. Mills. The story is about a girl who is too poor to buy a coat and the women in the community, who gather to make quilts to sell, offer to make her a coat out of their fabric scraps so that she can attend school. She proudly wears her new coat to school, feeling that it is her most treasured possession, but she is immediately teased by the other children at school because she is wearing a coat made out of rags. She bravely explains that each of the pieces of fabric was actually given to her from their mothers, and each piece of fabric has a story—the piece from someone’s favorite baby blanket, a piece of someone’s special dress…

I told my friend Mary, of Trout Lily Hill, about the book, and she told me about The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. This story is about a girl who had a quilt made out of clothing and special items that her family brought with them when they moved to America. The author tells the story about the uses of the quilt as it passed through the generations (a true story).

When I read these books to my girls, I thought about the fact that we have our own version of a keeping quilt. The quilts that my Grandmother made for me from scraps bring back special memories every time I see them. I will share just a few pictures of the many pieces of fabric that have a memory attached to them.

This off-white fabric with the blue, green, red, and yellow flowers was from the dress that my mom made for me for the first day of second grade. It had the most beautiful antique buttons on it…I wish I still had them.

Grandmother made an apron for me out of the brown-striped fabric in the photo below. I still have it, and my older daughter has taken it as her own.

This green, blue, and pink fabric was from a dress of my Grandmother’s. In fact, I think she still wears it…it hung in the closet for many years, but she recently started wearing it again. Am I right, Mom? My aunt had a dress out of the pink and cream fabric, and I had one with the pink, white, and blue on the right…

The pink heart and pink and green floral fabric were scraps from the border of a quilt that my Grandmother made me before I was a teenager—sometime after my parents redecorated my bedroom and bought me new bedroom furniture when I was 10.

My mom and I had look-alike dresses made out of the burgundy rose fabric below.

On the day that I broke my finger when I accidentally bumped the dowel rod that was holding our farmhouse window open as I watched my oldest brother mow the yard, I was wearing the red, pink, and green dress below. Although I was only five at the time of that incident, seeing that fabric brings back the memory of riding in the car to the doctor’s office with my hand soaking in a bowl of ice water…and the memory that my mom couldn’t go into the x-ray room with me because she was pregnant with my youngest brother (but my Grandmother was with us and went with me for the x-ray). The pink fabric on the left was from a dress that I wore when I was around 2 or 3. Mom saved that dress along with some other dresses from my childhood, and my girls play dress-up in them now.

The dresses were made very similar to the one pictured below.

Grandmother made a dress out of this blue and green on white fabric when I was about 2 1/2 years old. And I even have a photograph of myself wearing it.

I could share so many more photos of fabrics with special meaning from the quilt! Those are just a few…and I have a queen-size double wedding ring quilt on my bed made with similar scraps and so I sleep under the memories of my childhood, memories of seeing my Mom and Grandmother wearing those fabrics. And, as my daughter says when she wears something that my parents gave to her: “It feels like I am wearing a hug from them.” It feels like I am being tucked in with love every night as I sleep under the quilt Grandmother made.

Her work is so beautiful! As I took pictures of it, I, once again, admired the hand-stitching which is most visible on the back of the quilt:

The method of quilting that she used is called “stitch in the ditch” so you can barely see the quilting on the front of the quilt. She quilted on the seams between each piece of fabric.

After reading The Rag Coat and The Keeping Quilt to my daughters, I wished that somehow I would be able to pass quilts along to them that would have special meaning. Although I don’t make their clothing (at least not yet and when I do, it probably won’t be from quilting cotton), I have some ideas of ways to make special quilts for them.

The first quilt that I plan to make with them is inspired by the colors in this picture from The Rag Coat.

I didn’t take the book with me when I picked out the fabric and had to rely on my memory so I don’t have enough fabric to create the variety in that quilt pattern. Also, that quilt is a more complicated pattern than I want to attempt for the girls’ first quilt. I have convinced Ellie to try a quilt with simple squares instead of replicating this quilt. I promised her that we would try the pattern from the picture when she gets more experience. We started working on our quilt yesterday. I will be sharing about it next week.

I hope that my daughters will someday feel like they are being “wrapped in a hug” when they use the quilts that we make. In a couple of weeks, I will be getting a set of quilting frames so that I can hand-quilt our quilts to carry on the tradition. I know that my stitches will never look as beautiful as my Grandmother’s because she started quilting as a young girl, but maybe my girls will learn young and become as proficient as she.

If you have ever wondered why I love quilts and quilting so much, I hope that this post has answered that question. And I hope that it will inspire you to think about sewing something for yourself and future generations to enjoy.

One of my goals is to help you learn how to do that if you don’t have the skills already. What can you make this year that you can use and enjoy now and possibly pass along as a treasured heirloom to loved ones in the future? Maybe it will be something as simple as a set of linen napkins or a tablecloth, or maybe you will create a masterpiece that will end up in a museum…whatever it is, I want to help you get started.

What do you want to learn first?

Do you have any treasured items that have been passed down to you?

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