The Pied a Terre Quilt

A couple of years ago, I told Part 1 of this story, in which I mended a memory quilt for a customer.  She shared its sweet story for me to share here.  On the post, you can see the quilt and read the story of family love across generations and many miles.  I've also described the mending and rebuilding that I did. 

Here are a couple of photos from Part 1 to whet your whistle.  In today's post, I will share Part 2. 

Memory Quilt

 

Here is why people treasure quilts.  This quilt holds so many loving memories, symbolizes such a great story, and inspired this beautiful essay.  (Notes and photos on the repair process follow the story.)

My paternal grandmother made this quilt in the mid-1990s.  It was born from love that went back one long lifetime, and love that she wanted to carry forward several more lifetimes.

Grandma was a proud, tough “Okie.”  Born in 1919, she came of age in the worst hard times:  on a homestead farm between Hough and Guymon, Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  She was able to do some college.  But she left early, to join the WAVES during WWII.  Then, she married and had two kids.  She was stubborn, but she had a sweet streak, too.  Acutely aware that she was my only living grandparent, she tried to be all of my grandparents, all of the time.  She lived an hour away, but she often came to important school assemblies and birthday celebrations.  We spent every holiday together.  And I spent lots of time with her, at her old farmhouse.  We gardened, read, exercised, played piano, sang, danced, listened to opera, cooked, quilted, and crossworded together.  As she approached 70, she set her heart on finishing her bachelor’s degree.  She went back to school at an HBCU, where she connected with people from very different backgrounds and took down challenging advanced algebra classes.  She did well until she slipped on ice, broke her hip, and was never quite the same afterward.

Quilt for an 1895 Wedding

I love a dated quilt.  I love a dated quilt with a family story (see full story below).  Combined together....well.... it's simply grand.

The fabrics have some preservation issues and staining throughout.  And at some point, a critter chewed a hole in the quilt and almost chewed a second.  The good part of that story is that the critter was polite enough to avoid chewing up any of the embroidered history.

#1

#2

Family Quilts: A Quilt from Every Generation for 150+ Years

A customer sent me a quilt for repair, and included photos of her collection of family quilts.  She gave me permission to share them with you here.  What a treat to have this many quilts passed down for so many generations!  And only one, the Grandmother's Flower Garden, was in need of repair.

The owner says:  

I have a quilt from every generation down through ones that my mother made for me and for her 9 grandchildren. My family tree goes back to the Mayflower as a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin; it also includes James Bell Stevenson, whose brother Adlai was VP of the United States and Secretary of War (equivalent now days to Secretary of State).  

(The owner's comments continue below in italics.) 

 
star (made by the owner's great-great-great-grandmother)
Made by Sara Ann McLure Marsilliott (12-19-1793/8-23-1868)
for her daughter Mary Jane Marsiliott           

tag:
Quilt by
Sara Ann McLean Marsilliat
(Mrs Jacob Marsilliat)
(1797-1868)

Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 3

Well, well, well.  The story continues.  The backstory for this post can be found in two previous posts:

Flexner Family Names on a Signature Quilt
...in which researching names on a 1910 quilt traced the relationship between those people and my ancestors.

Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 2
...in which I was contacted by relatives of the people whose names are on the quilt, and they confirmed that whole new (to me) branch of my family.  The discussion left many more unanswered questions of the exact ties between the two branches.

---------------

And now for Part 3.  This chapter comes about because a second person came across these posts of mine while researching his own Flexner family history and wrote to me.  It didn't take much conversation to determine that we are indeed, also, related.  Our great-great-grandfathers (Moritz and Jacob) were brothers, so our common ancestors are our three-times-great-grandparents (Michael and Rebecca).  Isn't it marvelous to know the tree for that many generations?

A major question I had at the end of Part 2 was how the branch of the family on the Iowa quilt - descended from John Flexner - and my branch of the family - descended from Moritz Flexner - are connected.  The research of one of these new cousins of mine pretty well confirms that John was another brother of Moritz and Jacob.  They all emigrated and all headed branches of the Flexner family in this country.

My new-found cousin had traveled to the Czech Republic in 2019 as part of his research, and was able to locate and photograph the birthplace of my great-great-grandfather Moritz Flexner (b.1820) in Vseruby, Bohemia!  What a wonder!  He also found the birthplace of John and Jacob, in a different city, as the family had moved. 

A Log Cabin Quilt with Mystery

I really fell in love with this "homey" log cabin.  It's such a cozy look - and feel, too, as the fabrics are well-loved and very soft.

Family history says it was made in Virginia for the owner's mother, at or shortly after her birth, so in 1920-22.  The fabrics support that oral history, and it's a lovely collection of fabrics from the 1920s.

The mystery is that the top row of blocks was cut off at some point, and then reattached.  You can see that the straight furrow design reverses at the top row.  The reattaching was done by simply overlapping the two raw edges and stitching several rows of machine stitching with no attempt to neaten up the rough cut.

A Sparkling Crazy Quilt - Part 2

I've just received a wonderful story in my email.  It comes from a woman whose family quilt I've just repaired.  If anyone ever asks why history is important and fun and how quilts can be a part of history, here is the best answer!

Good morning.  Last evening my grand daughters, Desmin 7 and Cecilia 3 were over for dinner and we were sitting in the dining room. Desmin was facing the quilt and Cecilia with her back to the quilt. The girls are usually very observant and notice anything different in our house but had said nothing about the quilt. Suddenly Cecilia said I love this and went over to touch the bottom of the quilt. Desmin who is quite the artist at her young age and since very small done lots of art projects with her grandpa and daddy and on her own, still said nothing. I said Desmin what do you think. She said, I just keep looking at the quilt and how beautiful it it is. Then she gets up and go to the quilt and very gently feels some of the patches and is especially interested in the beaded ones (sparkle ones). Then they wanted to know how old great great grandma would be. Desmin wanted to know how old she was when she made it, how long it took her and how she did it. The quilt lives on.

I recently posted about the subject of this story, a sparkling crazy quilt.  On that post, you will find lots more photos of the creative and fun embellishments and fabrics on this quilt, and why there is a ribbon on the quilt bearing the name "Nordd. Lloyd / D. Havel".

A Sparkling Crazy Quilt

 

This is a stand-out crazy quilt, isn't it?  

I generally think of Victorian crazies as having so many more blacks and maroons, browns and navies, with brighter fabrics and embroidery threads interspersed only now and then. 

So I looked back at photos of other crazies that have crossed my path, and well, was surprised to see how many are very colorful after all.  So what is it about this one that makes it feel so very different? 

This quilt is super joyful!  It is packed of a wide variety of embellishments, all heightened by beading and other creative and fancy bits - it is simply dancing.  The brightness has been heightened a bit by patching done in the 1970s that add in that era's colors, too.  But clearly the quilt was a riot of color right from the start!

Antique Photo from Melrose, MA

A few years ago, I did a lot of research on a quilt with many names inscribed.  It seems to be fund-raising quilt, and was made in Melrose, MA, in 1897 or 8.  The information and connections made via this quilt just keep on coming...

You can read about the quilt, the research process, and the results - there are 14 blog posts - starting here, if you want to read through the whole process step by step.  There also is a summary of the process, a description of my adventures taking the quilt "home" to Melrose, and downloadable sets of data that I collected.  

But wait - now there's more!

More Snowflake Quilts for the Winter Solstice

Yes, I'm a day late for the Solstice, but better late than never, I figure.  Let's slow down for a while and appreciate the cycles of time and the amazing Earth we all share.  Wishing everyone health and kindness. 

And so, let's talk about the quilts.  I've showcased two Snowflake quilts here on my blog made from a Paragon kit.  And now, here come numbers 3 and 4!!!  

The first quilt I wrote about was a repair job.  The quilt was made in the late 1930s.  There are two posts.  One tells about the quilt and its history, which is noteworthy because the owner also has the diary of her great-grandmother who made the quilt.  She describes details of shopping for the kit and how the sewing progressed.  The other post details the repair work I did, which is noteworthy because the owner asked me to add an embroidered dedication to her great-grandmother and the cousin who received the quilt as a graduation gift in 1940.

The story of the second quilt was sent to me by a reader.  She inherited her quilt from her grandmother's house.  She doesn't know who exactly made the quilt, but it is likely someone in the family. 

Now come these two quilts!  This information was sent to me by a quilter/quilt historian friend.  She says:

Musing on Family History and Our Current National Disasters

I posted a few days ago about how about a quilt made in Iowa 1910 is connected to my ancestors and family members.  At one point in my writing, it occurred to me how many people whose names are on that quilt soon were to experience the 1918 pandemic.  In fact Etta Flexner, whose is one of the people I was researching, died in 1919.  I haven’t been able to find a death certificate for her (yet), but who knows - the timing is right for her to have been a flu victim.  She was 40 years old at her death, so she certainly didn't die due to old age.

So, since my mind has been on the ancestors, here is our family story about that pandemic.

My mom was born in 1916.  When she was 2, my grandma got sick with “the flu”.  She experienced super high fevers and probably nearly died, though no one ever actually said the word “death” in my presence.  As a result, my mom said she was “emotionally unstable” for the rest of her life. 

My mom and grandma, 1916

I only heard the story in euphemisms, so I don’t know anything with any certainty or in any detail.  Perhaps there was brain damage from the fevers.  I’ve also heard it postulated by a therapist that sometimes high fevers like that can unlock memories and emotions that have been long suppressed as a means of self-protection.  (And there is other circumstantial evidence of some sort of abuse in her childhood home.)

In any case, she was “fragile”, couldn’t handle any noise, and had terrible nightmares for the rest of her life, often waking in the middle of the night screaming.  I don’t think she’s actually smiling in any of the photos of her after than time.  In other words, my mom never experienced her as a healthy woman, and her childhood and much of the family life were curtailed because of my grandma’s fragile state.  My mom never could have more that one friend in the apartment at a time.  She just generally couldn’t make any noise.  And no one ever came and comforted her at night or even the next morning when my grandma woke screaming.  The thought of that now, seeing it as an adult and parent, makes me cringe.

My mom and grandma, 1927

 

I can tell you that the fallout from that has traveled from my mom to me, and as much as I tried to stop it, to my kids as well.  

So to me, this pandemic raises all those memories, and I’m sure that is part of why I am so scared of it, and have been staying home and avoiding even the things that are now considered pretty safe.  I just want to hide.  

And it makes me even more adamant about how dangerous and terrible our country’s handling of the whole situation has been.

To take all that and add it to the current rise in racial violence and hatred, including anti-Semitism, and I find myself also reliving the terrors that my father and his family suffered in Germany in the 1930s.  That, too, has come down to me as a deep emotional legacy.  I’ve long been aware of the similarities between the 1930s and the 2010s - the rhetoric, the creeping lock down of political systems, the lies, the fanning of prejudicial flames…on and on….

The Wassermann family c.1913

My grandmother, my dad, uncle, and grandfather

Bamberg, Bavaria

My grandfather’s farm supply business collapsed in 1935 because his customers were afraid to frequent a Jewish business.  My grandfather was overwhelmed with grief and then came down with pneumonia and died.  My uncle escaped to England, and then spent several years in an enemy alien camp.  He said it was fairly comfortable, but underneath it all, they were all still locked up, their lives on hold.  My father escaped on a British ship which was torpedoed at sea when England declared war on Germany in Sept 1939.  He saw people drown. He suffered nightmares the rest of his life.  They both suffered deep guilt for not having been settled enough soon enough to get their relatives out of Germany.  My grandmother and all her sibs save one were captured in Jan 1940 and killed in the camps.  The sib who survived apparently was saved by having married a gentile widower.  They survived due to the kindness of one of his daughters.  His other daughter was frightened and disowned them.

My grandmother Martha and grandfather Karl
c.1936-7

 

My dad Heinz and uncle Kurt
c.1936-37

 

When I think of how much my ancestors suffered, how many were killed in horrible ways….  

It’s not always fun inside my brain and heart, that’s for sure.  I was told from childhood that my parents had given me my grandmother’s name as my middle name so that some part of her made it out of Germany.  I can tell you that I am always aware of carrying her pain and living for her as well as for myself.

I often think about all the genocide in the world, and about how the pain and loss is carried by multiple generations.  And I wonder, given the ugly histories in pretty much every part of the world, if there are any people anywhere who have come through this all without such inherited emotional pain.  My heart cries out for the imprisoned children at our border.  I know they will, at best, have a lifelong struggle to regain their equilibrium.  The same can be said for survivors of friends and family who have met with horrible and wrongful deaths on our streets.

It seems like these times are all about suffering through the same things yet again.  Why?  It seems so futile to me that we could be repeating both these histories even after we’ve had so much time to learn from previous mistakes and regroup and make better plans and systems.  

Well, thanks for listening.  And please….vote!!!!  Vote!!!  As they say, vote like your life depends on it, because it does.  And I have the family history to prove it.  

My father Henry Wasserman and mother Adelaide (nee Flexner) Wasserman
about 1947-8

Flexner Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 2

 

You'll find the full backstory to this post on a post from April, 2018.  Here's a short summary.

Back in the 1980s, I'd found three people with my mother's maiden name, Flexner, on a 1910 fundraiser quilt at the museum in Kalona, Iowa.  They were not included in the genealogy that my mom knew, so we went exploring.  And after a circuitous and long route, I finally unearthed the answer:

My great-great-grandmother and the mother of the man named on the quilt were cousins.  They both had married men from the Flexner family.  So this quilt had led us to a branch of the family that we had never known about!  Unfortunately, by the time the internet came along to help the search, my mom had passed and never got to hear the conclusion.

Then last summer, in August, 2019, I was contacted by a woman who had found my blog while doing research on her Flexner ancestors.  She was wondering if the Jacob Flexner in her family was the same person as the Jacob Flexner in my family.  Turns out, they are not.  They were born about 6 years apart and have different middle initials and different parents.  

But here's where it gets really cool.  The two cousins named Mrs. Flexner both had many children, and amongst them, both had sons named Jacob.  One Jacob is brother of the man named on the quilt, and the other Jacob is brother of my great-grandfather.

And now, thanks to another cousin in that line, I have received photographs from their family archive!

What an exciting moment!

Social Justice Sewing Academy - Remembrance Block Project

Hi, everyone.  My recent three weeks of sewing have been deep and meaningful.

As some of you know, I have been doing some sewing for the Social Justice Sewing Academy for a while now.  This is a brilliant organization, lovingly and thoughtfully created and organized. The mission statement includes using and teaching sewing and art skills as a way to voice social justice topics and to give voice to parts of the population who are underserved or not served by the art world.

I can best describe the Remembrance Block Project by quoting from the website:

...a quilt block community art project that will provide activist art banners for local and national activist organizations who have requested creative statements to be publicly displayed that represent solidarity as well as remembrance. This partnership will create a visual statement to memorialize those who have been unjustly murdered by community violence (e.g. gun violence, domestic violence, child abuse, etc.) race-based violence, law enforcement, and gender or sexuality based violence. These artivism blocks will honor the lives of individuals through symbolism and portrait. Their names and identities will be displayed during community activism events reminding the world that their lives mattered.

Unfortunately, as we know, the list of names is very long and continues to grow.

I received my assignment three weeks ago.  I spent the first week researching the life cut short that I was to memorialize, and two weeks on the sewing.

Here is Bettie Jones' sad, sad, story:

This block honors Bettie Jones, who died on December 26, 2015 after being shot while trying to help a neighbor in distress.  There is lots of information online about her murder, because it was complex and in litigation for 4 years.  Her landlord and upstairs neighbor had called the police because his son was suffering from mental illness and had become violent and threatening.  The landlord asked her to open the door for the police, but when she did and the officer saw the son coming downstairs and towards him brandishing a baseball bat, he fired into the building.  He killed both the son (Quintonio LeGrier) and Bettie.  Quintonio himself had called earlier to ask for help, but the dispatchers didn’t send anyone.  In the end, the officer was fired and the dispatchers suspended for some time.  To me, this whole heartbreaking story highlights so many ways that this system is broken.

Red was Bettie’s signature color.  She was the matriarch of a loving family, and so I surrounded her with flowers representing her 5 children and 9 grandchildren.  This reminds me of all the large red and white flower arrangements that surrounded her red coffin at her funeral.  The golden bells at the top represent the family choir called Seven Bells.  Her nickname was Bettie Boo.

And here are some in-progress and detail photos.

 

 

The Remembrance Blocks are an on-going project.  You can register to stitch a block on the SJSA website.  There are other projects on-going as well - another sewing project to make memory quilts for bereaved families, and a brand new small business incubator.

There is also a block-of-the-month project.  These blocks are designs by the students in the social justice sewing workshops (which are now on hiatus due to the pandemic).  The blocks are super powerful.  I made one back in March.

I can tell you that this was not emtionally easy, but it has opened my heart and taught me a lot.  It has been a very Good thing to do.

The growing collection of Remembrance Blocks is on Instagram at @sew4justice_sjsa.

Why Restore and Conserve Old Quilts?

read the story of this quilt

Why do I like repairing quilts?  My academic background is in anthropology, which taught me about how much meaning the objects we make and use every day can hold.  And all quilts have their story.

"Storytelling is the place where social and personal history meet."

This is a line from a lovely book I recently received, How to Write Your Personal or Family History, by Katie Funk Wiebe.  The book was written by the mother of a dear friend of mine.  She wrote many books, many of them about family and history.

One thing she stresses is how small memories and facts can build a valuable memoir.  I feel the same is true of quilts - it's not only the flashy and museum quality quilts that are worth gentle handling and care.

Pinwheel Quilt - The Family Story and Photos

 
I did a major restoration job on this heirloom quilt.  For before and after photos, close-ups of the fabrics I used, etc. read, Pinwheel Quilt - The Fabrics and The Repair.

The quilt owner supplied the history and this great family photo.

Here's the who's who:

"The old couple on the left are my great grandparents Col. Mark and his wife Nancy Wayne Mark. Several of their children are in the photo. My grandmother, Millie Mark Fitzgerald is standing directly to the right of two of her brothers. My mother is the little girl on her brother’s shoulders. They had moved to a farm near Portland from Jamestown, North Dakota after my grandparents separated. I think the photo must have been taken over 100 years ago.  These three women each had a hand in the quilt. "

Read on!  The family zig-zagged across this country.  It's quite a tale.

Pinwheel Quilt - The Fabrics and The Repair

This quilt measures a whopping 93" x 109" !  The blocks are about 11 1/4".  I think many of the fabrics date to the 1860s and 1870s. 

 before restoration

after restoration

The good news is that this quilt is a beloved family heirloom.  For amazing family story and photos of the four generations of women whose lives are intertwined with this quilt, read Pinwheel Quilt - The Family Story and Photos.

The sad news is that it is a victim of the caustic nature of early black and brown dye processes.  Many of the early dyes added metals like iron to the dyes as mordants, the substances that help the actual dyes adhere to the fibers.  These metals have destroyed the fibers over the years.

Two Quilts that Connect 1635, 1897, and 1998

Well, folks, the 1890s quilt I researched for several years and then exhibited last winter is, as they say, the gift that keeps on giving.  (Check the highlighted links for background on the quilt and it's story.)

Last spring, a woman brought me a rail fence quilt to repair.  It had been made for her by her grandmother.  A few days later, as I was looking over the quilt as part of making an estimate on the repairs, I discovered that the grandmother had signed and dated (1998) the quilt.  Lo and behold, her last name was a name of someone on my research quilt.

Can you guess where this is going?!

Grab your favorite beverage (mine would be a cuppa tea) and put your feet up - it's story time!

A Tale of Two Quilts

 

Just about three years ago, I posted about a quilt I repaired.  The great-granddaughter who brought me the quilt for repair wrote the story of the quilt and its maker, and sent photos, all of which are included in my post.  The pattern is Pointed Tile, and both the great-grandma and the great-grandpa were quite handy with all sorts of needlework and crafts. 

Christina Waldman found that post and wrote to me about a Pointed Tile top made by her grandmother that she was quilting up.

My Happy Holiday Sewing

We had just a few holiday plans, no travel, no guests, and so I decided that sewing on all sorts of back-burner projects of my own was The Thing To Do.  It was so fun!  Here are the results.

The farm.
Another (could it be the last?) quilt in my Something From Nothing series.  This one's been in the planning stage for nearly two years, taking tiny steps towards construction.  It entered full-out construction mode during a fiber retreat in October.  And now it's done!  (It's made with plastic produce bags.)

Just Wanna Quilt Blog

I'm starting something new! I've put up my first post as a contributing blogger on the Just Wanna Quilt blog. Just Wanna Quilt is: a research project to investigate all the who-what-why questions of the quilt world, a research project to clarify copyright and other legal aspects of creating art and craft, a super fun quilt adventure, and a great group of vibrant and interesting quilters. There's a podcast (which I've been interviewed on) and sewing challenge projects and lots of great discussions in the facebook group, and etc. etc. Woo hoo!  Thanks to Prof. Elizabeth Townsend-Gard for brainstorming this wonderful adventure!

Here's my inaugural post: