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Our Treasured Quilt
Although "ready-made" dresses were available from the Sears and Roebuck
catalog in the early 1900s, most were made at home from fabric purchased
from the catalog or from local stores. I remember my sister Gwen and I
poring over the selection of different patterns and colors to decide
which we wanted for our dresses. Mom would mail in the order and we
would wait for what seemed to be an eternity for Mr. Hulsey, our postman
from Ladonia, to deliver the order to our mailbox on the main road. It
was at the end of our lane, which was about 100 yards from our house.
When we saw him placing a package in our mailbox, we were so excited and
ran at once to retrieve the package. Mom would open it and watch as we
admired our fabric selections. As Mom made our dresses on a Singer
treadle sewing machine, the sound of the mechanism was music to our
ears. Some of our dresses were very special to us for various reasons.
It may have been a dress we wore to a recital, or one that really fit
well, or one that brought many compliments, but whether they were
special or not, Mom always kept the leftover fabric.
No material
was ever wasted. The scraps left from making the dresses were used to
make quilt tops. These were pieced by hand. Some quilts were made from
strips of cloth sewn together in blocks about twelve inches square. The
blocks were sewn together in some sort of pattern. Other quilts were
made with templates of some form such as a diamond. These were assembled
by color to make a beautiful design, such as the Texas Star, which was
one large eight-point star with one color in the middle of the star,
then other colors radiating out from that center. The corners and sides
were filled in with a contrasting color. Some quilts were made with
patterns requiring appliqué, such as the Dutch Doll, which was first
pieced together then attached to a square of cloth. When a top was
completed, a quilting frame was hung from the ceiling. It consisted of
four boards, each six to eight feet long, held together at the corners
by metal clamps. The boards for the sides of the quilt had holes bored
in them about two inches apart. A white cloth quilt lining was sewn into
these holes using long stitches and a strong thread. Next cotton batting
filling was laid on the lining, and the pieced top was put on last. When
it was all basted together, the quilting began. As a strip about one
foot wide was quilted, the braces were removed from that end of the
quilt and it was rolled on the board from that end of the frame, then
the braces were fastened again.
Sometimes neighbor ladies were
invited to help with the quilting. They would bring all of their
children with them along with a covered dish for lunch and stay all day
to quilt. The children played and had fun. At one of these quilting
bees, one of the boys kept running under the middle of the quilt and
hitting it with his head, causing the ladies to prick their fingers with
the needles. His mother told him to quit several times. Finally, she
picked up a pair of scissors by the blades and whacked him over the head
with the handles. He stayed out from under the quilt after that.
I remember one quilt in particular that Mom made. It was a Dutch Doll
quilt. She used scraps of fabric from dresses she had made for my sister
Gwen and me, as well as from little overalls and shirts she had made for
our brother Don. The bonnets for the dolls were made from solid-colored
fabric that coordinated with the dress fabric and was embroidered with
hat-bands and flowers. All three of us kids loved that quilt. After many
years of use and many launderings, it began to disintegrate. Although
the quilt was ragged and falling apart, Mom kept it because it had so
many memories.
After Mom's death, Gwen wanted the remains of that
quilt. At her house in Orange, Texas, she selected three meaningful
blocks that were still in pretty good shape, one for each of us three
kids that had been made with scraps from our own article of clothing. At
Christmas that year, she surprised us with our own Dutch Doll picture.
Gwen had framed each one and put a placard in the frame with each
picture. The one in mine reads, "One block from a quilt that was pieced,
set together, embroidered and quilted by Orianna (McDonnold) Coney
during the winter of 1938/39. This particular block was made from
'left-over scraps' of material she had used to make a little dress for
their oldest daughter, Lowell Ray. Orianna was the wife of Lowell Coney.
They were married 70 years!"
What a marvelous memory! Mine
is hung in my computer room where I see it every day.
Lowell McCormack
Gainesville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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