Wednesday Woes And Things I Stowe

Somewhere, squirreled away, I have a box of old quilts that are falling apart. I mean really falling apart! My Wednesday Woe is that I couldn't find them today.

When I packed them away, I just knew someday there would be something I could do with those tattered quilts, and that someday has arrived. I'll tell you more about that project in another post. Right now, I have something I want to show you.

While looking for the box of tattered quilts, ones my mother-in-law gave me a while back (because she's a hoarder like me person who saves things believing everything can be reused or reinvented), I unpacked another wonderful memory quilt that my mother-in-law's cousin Ruth made for her in 1960. 

There's a square for each person in my mother-in-law's family. The hands on the quilt were made by making a paper pattern of that person's hand. 

Each lady's hand has a ring representing her birthstone and the flowers on the square designate the flower for that month. The men of the family didn't get rings, but they did get flowers.

I say "...another..."  because, last August in this post, I showed a quilt (pictured below) made in 1936 by a small group of my mother-in-law's family and friends.

This is my favorite quilt. I'm amazed it has survived fully intact, for such a long time. This year is the 80th anniversary of its creation. Each person sewed their own square and embroidered their name on it.

Wild Bill's maternal grandmother, Mattie, held a quilting circle on Tuesdays every week at her house. Her beloved husband, Will, rigged a pulley system on the ceiling that Mattie used to store her quilting frame up, out of the way, on the ceiling. 

It got me to wondering...do women still make quilts by hand any more?  

Most quilters I've known sew them with machines, which is probably a real time-saver in these harried times.

 I don't know for sure since I'm not good at sewing. But I do admire the perfect little stitches on these two handmade quilts.

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