This has been a busy week but a good week. I hope yours has been good, too.
Quilts fascinate me. I love to look at them. I love to think about the hands that
made them. I like to wonder about the lady whose hands sewed the pieces and
quilted the finished product. I especially love old quilts.
Of course you know that quilts in America date back to the colonial times. They
weren't the showpieces of late. Life was hard and practical and so was homemaking.
Quilts were used on beds to keep a family warm and on doors and windows to keep
out the cold. They had a function.
Between 1750 and 1850, quilts were pieced and patched and became more elaborate,
with many still preserved for us today. Some were so elaborate that they were years
in the making and quilting.
It was customary in the 1800s for a young woman to make 13 quilt tops before she
married. Twelve were to use in her homemaking and a special large one was for her bed.
Also, "heirloom" quilts were made by mothers to save for their children to use when
they began to make homes of their own. We are priviledged to have several quilts and
coverlets made by my husband's grandmothers, both of whom were born in the 1890s.
This "Dutch Doll" quilt belongs to our youngest daughter. It was blocked by her great-grandmother
in 1930 (84 years ago!) and quilted in 2004 by a quilting guild in our area. It looks like it was done
yesterday. We love to look at the different fabrics and wonder what they originally were. Was it
her dress...his shirt...her apron? We'll never know, but we like to wonder. What a treasure!
Do you have special quilts? I'd love to hear about them.
Have a wonderful weekend and we'll visit next week.
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