Piecing Family History
Recently, I've been immersing myself in family history. Oddly enough, while I wasn't close to my immediate family, I've always been proud of the heritage of Scots, Irish, Welsh and English on my mother's side and the German, Irish, and Native American on my dad's side.
My mother was an only child, my father the oldest of six, so naturally the most blanks are on my mother's side.
I know the surnames by to my great grandparents, but before that it's sketchy. I know LOTS of research was done for my grandmother to get into DAR...but I have no documentation. But it's how we know the little we do know.
I suppose one of these days I will need to join Ancestry.com and see what's been done. I know there was someone, now deceased who was researching the Tyler side, which was my great grandmother's married name and my grandmother's maiden name. My great grandmother's maiden name, however was Burns...yes, THAT Burns. Their Scottish history was very important to them - important enough that my mother remembered hearing them discuss it as a child. My, great grandmother died when my mother was eight years old in 1939. Mom was a November baby, so the things she remembered from when she was eight would have been the months following November of 1938, her date of birth being 1930.
My grandfather died in 1944, when my mother was 14, she said, so he must have died sometime after her birthday, November 27, and the end of 1944. My grandmother, who never remarried, was quite the accomplished needlework person. So was her mother. These quilts, and the quilt top and quilt blocks are my connections to them. I thought at first that the quilt top and blocks were the work of my aunts and paternal grandmother. Not so. These we re put together in the sixties about the same time that my maternal grandmother moved to our house….just after my sister was born in 1967. I knew that I recognized the fabric on the quilt top, the sashing was the same fabric from a blanket that was on my grandmother’s bed - one that I later used as an adult in my mother’s house. I don’t know what happened to that blanket. I suspect my sister has it but I can’t be sure.
So, piecing together these facts, the memories and the evidence of the quilts, I’ve deducted the following:
This quilt, a ‘whole cloth quilt’ with an appliqued Thistle pattern was most likely made before 1916 for my grandmother’s wedding. I’ve used it (gently) for years, never realizing the significance of it
Not sure if it was for the first wedding that never happened or for the second one
to my grandfather. She was engaged to be married to a dentist when she was
in her late teens but the young man got blood poisoning in a boil on his face and died.
She married my grandfather in 1916, which was inscribed on her wedding band, which
my mother wore until she died, the whereabouts of which I do not know. My mother
gave me HER wedding band which my daughter’s father pawned, along with the
wedding set that he had given me after I left him. How that happened is another blog
entry for later with a very old date.
Anyway, I had thought it was a ‘tulip’ pattern but could not find one like it
anywhere online, likewise, the thistle pattern I found is more similar than the
tulip but the way in which it was done is sufficiently unique that I haven’t
found anything else like it. Sadly the border has shattered (read disintegrated)
and I’ve been told that if I replace the border, it becomes a 2012 quilt.
I am going to leave this other one, and recreate it;
I will repair the Thistle one and eventually quilt the crazy quilt top
and assemble the other blocks. I don’t know that my mother didn’t have a
hand in piecing some of those blocks. Her goal was always to get a sewing machine.
But she said that needlework made her ‘nervous’. And lordy that woman did not need
to be more nervous than she was as she bordered on neurotic most of the time!
She was one of the most irrationally anxious people I’ve ever known.
For someone who defied her mother and moved to an entirely different
state to teach, achieved an undergrad degree and lived with roommates
and on her own in the 1950’s, my mother was the epitome of the neurotic
housewife. After learning some of the things I did, I sometimes wonder if
her guilty conscience didn’t make her that anxious. That’s not to say tha
t she was untrue to my father, because I don’t believe she ever was. But
she could have been. I certainly know the value of keeping the things one
does to cope to oneself if anyone does. I’ve never been a good liar, and I don’t
think my mother was either. That is to say, I could always tell when she
wasn’t being completely truthful. No clue if others, like my father felt the same.
So, I do not know if these quilts were made solely by my grandmother
and great grandmother or if, in my mother’s youth, she may have pieced
some of the bow tie and other blocks, of which I have
finally found the name thanks to http://www.quilterscache.com -
a tip from the owner of the local quilt shop I’ve been patronizing.
It’s called The Cross and Crown:
Cross and Crown Quilt Block
And of course, the one I knew instantly as “Bow Tie”
Bow Tie Quilt Block
Here are some of the ones I have:
You can see which ones are Cross and Crown and which ones are Bow-Tie, right?
I still think they are some of the ugliest combinations I’ve ever seen in my life.
If I didn’t know better I’d say my mother pieced these, but I know that is probably
not the case. But these are definitely her um…eclectic taste.
I know she wanted to quilt later in life…one of the quilt books I found
in the trunk was dated 1991…two years before my father died.
I may have to take blame for her not doing that since that was about
the time both me and my sister were having marital problems.
She split first and then reconciled. Right after she reconciled I split
and did NOT reconcile and spent a good chunk of the next couple
years moving in with parents, then with a boyfriend who changed his
mind, then into my own place for about a year and then in with another
boyfriend which lasted about four years until he started to lose his mind
and then I found myself. I also found Maxx (who I was to spent the
next six years with) and put myself on the path to becoming who I
really was instead of pretending to be who everyone else thought I
should be - that was the end of 1994..
My father died in there, then my mother got cancer, my daughter got
pregnant…..so there was a lot going on. By the time she was
diagnosed, Mom had sold the house and moved to Memphis, actually
Germantown. Then I spent another little while with her while I figured
out if I was gonna do the ‘relationship thing’ again, not being able to work
full time due to the stuff going on with her. I didn’t get legally married,
but I spent those years learning about me.
Anyway, suffice it to say that 1991 thru 1994 were pivotal
years for my mother and she probably gave up the idea of ever quilting
again, if she ever had in wanted to the first place. And when she passed
on, her things were divided between myself and my sister and our daughters.
But I got the trunk. In the bottom of which was my mother’s secret
longing to return to the sewing machine. Well, maybe not so secret,
but she certainly didn’t really try…she was what we today
call a martyr. She was too busy living for my dad to do anything for herself.
She had all kinds of time after, and never did. I guess she never got over it
making her ‘nervous’.
Seque to now, and my current constructive channeling of my OCD
obsessiveness. I’m making quilt tops and lining up future projects
like nobody’s business. I never will be able to knit like I want to.
I might finish the odd piece once in a while, but as much as I love creating…
that’s not my medium. Spinning is …different. It’s meditative…
repetitive enough that I can lose myself in it and my body motions will
continue without damaging the finished product….yarn.
As long as people are willing to buy the yarn from me that I spin….
and I make enough to buy the roving for the next item…I’m good.
But quilting...that’s a lifelong dream to make something, to create
something that will outlast my lifetime, something that will be treasured by
others as a reminder of my time here on this earth. Yeah, so it’s a
little dramatic. But it’s like the crafter’s equivalent of planting trees.
It will outlast me, I may never sleep beneath them or find comfort
from them on a cold night or enjoy fond memories of children playing
on them…but every cut, every stitch, every placement, is a
Spell of Making. I make the future, the happy laughter of children
playing, the joy of a wedding night, the comfort by the fire on a
cold, rainy day, the timeless pleasure of looking at something beautiful.
Yes, all of those memories are stitched into a quilt,
memories stitched into the future waiting for someone to come
and live them. I figure I haven’t done much with all that potential that they
said was wasted on someone with no more ambition than I had.
Soooo....for the first time in my life it’s important to me to leave
something behind instead of minimizing my impact on the Earth.
I feel the shade of my mother, my grandmothers, my
great-grandmothers, standing behind me, watching me work,
inspiring my hands, and waiting…both for the finished product
and for me to join them. For the first time in my life I have a
burning ambition. And when my life is over, I can take
my place among them, being welcomed with all those
‘Well done!’s” that I never got to hear. They are all ancestors now.
I am the oldest among their progeny. I have a daughter and two nieces,
and a granddaughter to guide, cajole and hopefully one day see
do the same. And I also sense my paternal grandmother,
to whom I had originally attributed these works. She was a quilter too.
I remember seeing the frame hung from the ceiling when I was a child.
That’s why I thought these quilts were hers, or pieces my aunts had done.
But no….this is that link - that connection to the past on my
mother’s side for which I have been searching so long.
Now I have something they touched, loved, fussed over,
to take inspiration from. I am also charged with preserving it.
And here is the crazy quilt top, hand pieced but machine assembled
This one is more attractive than I think the quilt tops assembled from
the other blocks will be. That red fabric in the border was also in a blanket
that belonged to my grandmother and I had it after she died, but I must have
left it at home when I moved out. Same with the bow tie quilt that
I think my sister has now. She’s purportedly looking for it.
But I’m not holding my breath. Another fabric I recognize from this quilt
is the blue cornerstones. THAT fabric is also in the bow tie quilt and is
lovely against all the other colors which were somewhat better comprised.
This quilt is nice, for a crazy quilt and is probably the last one that my grandmother
pieced on her sewing machine that I have. It’s one of those old-timey Singers
…black with gold lettering in the enamel, in a tiger oak cabinet.
It’s in horrible shape, made even more horrible by the accident
with Cinders in 2008 Down to 6 Lives She Goes!! when I was using
it as my altar. It’s also possible that my mother’s hands pieced
some - or all- of these blocks against an unknown future before
she fled Mississippi and the thumb of my grandmother.
I will never know the answer to these questions. But I will provide
answers to mine. Here is my vow:
To create, to beautify the world with physical, tangible beauty,
and to document the journey so that no one will wonder,
my daughter at least will have answers. Anything I create will have
answers for those that follow me.