Anna: So, Mom, tell us about this quilt. It’s the green one with the flower design.
Mom: The making of this quilt which is called a Grandmother’s Flower Garden has quite a history. It took me about 60 years to get it made. I started out when I was in high school, maybe between the first and last year, maybe the year before that. I spent the summer with my cousin Emmagene in New Mexico and she was making a Flower Garden quilt and so I had to start my own while I was there.
Anna: So, Mom, let me interrupt you for a second. I’ve seen some pictures of you at about that age with some horses and all. So that was that summer that you spent with Emmagene?
Mom: Yes it was. I, didn’t, of course, get very many made, but I kept going after I went home and I picked up some of the fabrics from clothing that I had. And my grandmother then made…I probably pieced a third of the blocks and she pieced two thirds would be my guess. Of course I would have given up long before that and gotten rid of the blocks, given them to somebody else or something if she hadn’t had a hand in it.
Anna: Which grandmother was that?
Mom: This was Grandmother Collins. And so I kept it and kept on going and then but I had never put them together, and this one being a hexagon was difficult to put together. As difficult as piecing the blocks. Obviously this is not a good quilt for a beginner. There are many many that would have been better than that, but that was what my cousin was piecing so I did the same. I’ll interrupt the thought for a minute and say that many many years later when I was visiting my cousin I asked her if she ever finished hers and she did but later like I did but not as late as I did. In the 40s or early 50s I decided I would put them together. Now at that time I had 3 children and was expecting the fourth I think was the way of it. Either that or 2 and expecting the third. I decided I just couldn’t give any time to it. But had bought the fabric which originally I was planning to put like I had seen in a picture green around each block and then put a white one that would put it together which was supposed to be a walk in the flower garden. But anyway I decided that because it was so hard I would just give one row to it which would be the green one and it’s a bright green which is typical of the time, the fabrics and colors used at that time, but not at the beginning when I started the blocks. So it’s a little bit unusual to see this one put together with green and if it is it’s usually light green but this is a full strong green.
Anna: So you’re saying that the flower blocks are a little bit more muted in tone than the bright green that you bought in the late 40s or early 50s to be the part in between.
Mom: That’s correct. And another thing I hated to give up was the blocks that were made with fabrics that had been my clothing. And in order to mark them some way, but not stand out too much I did a little embroidery of the center of the ones where they were made with my clothing.
Anna: I see one here that is a solid yellow and you did outline it in yellow, a yellow chainstitch. Mom: Right, it was a yellow chainstitch.
Anna: So you didn’t do every yellow one, but you found a yellow one that was yellow and did it with the chain.
Mom: That’s right. I didn’t want it to stand out too much but I wanted to mark it.
Anna: Cool. Now I know what to look for.
Mom: And so then time went by and I still didn’t do any more. I had about 3 blocks put together I think. It was just too much and I kept it and I had it for years and years and years. Several times I tried to give the blocks to friends that were quilters but they knew that I would be sorry if I did.
Anna: Plus, they probably thought it was hard.
Mom: Well, I’m sure that’s true too. So, after I married Charles, we would make frequent trips to see his folks and I could listen but I couldn’t participate very much in the talk because I didn’t know anything. And so this gave me something to do while I listened to the talk. So I would take some and put them together and finally got through with that. At that time, putting figured material on the back was popular in quilts. So instead of putting the back as just white muslin, I found this flower garden pattern (or rather I shouldn’t say that since that gets mixed up with the pattern itself of the quilt), but it has I think maybe roses or something on it It’s some red/pink flowers which seemed appropriate if anything and so I decided to make that the backing. By that time I had arranged to borrow a quilting frame a small quilting frame from a friend and I kept it set up in our living room for a year while quilted it.
Anna: So it took you about a year to do the quilting part after it was pieced.
Mom: And it was a small quilting frame so it didn’t take up a lot of room. But it sat there in the living room for that time. Oh you could move the whole thing out of the room, I mean it was small enough to move through the door so you could move it out if you had company or something like that, so we did that occasionally but not very often.
Anna: Well that is cool.
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