Elsie's Broken Dishes

My grandmother, Elsie Lucretia Race was born on July 19, 1894 in Matteson, Cook County, Illinois. On September 22, 1913, Elsie married John Edward Barnes Blunt (“Jack”) Walton. The couple had one child, a son, Duane Edward Walton born June 09, 1915 in Battle Creek, Michigan. These photos show Elsie as a young woman and again a few years before her death. The second pair of photos show Elsie with her young son Duane, and then the two of them as adults.
Elsie had pieced this Broken Dishes top, but never finished it. My mother had four 2x4s that she clamped together at the corners and suspended on sawhorses in our basement. The back fabric stretched and thumb-tacked to the 2x4s, a layer of polyester fiberfill batting was added and then the quilt top. Soft yellow yarn was used to tie-off the comforter (my sister and I used to be charged with sitting under the comforter and passing the threaded needle back up through the layers to my mother).

A year or so ago, I removed the yarn ties, unstitched the edges, and released the quilt top from the comforter. Rescuing disabled family quilts is one of my passions. Earlier this year, I added the inner and outer borders (after much searching and auditioning of A LOT of different fabrics).

I took the shots in the photo collage above last night, shortly after I opened the box from Bonnie of Quiltville... and as I was adding the binding... I’ll take “proper” pictures of the quilt after I spend some “quality time” hand stitching the binding.

I think my grandmother would be delighted with the results. I know that I am!!

Elsie Was a Quilter

Meet Elsie,

my paternal grandmother.

She was a quilter.

[please be sure to read all the way to the end ~

there's plenty of quity content here.]

Elsie was born in Illinois,

the daughter of a meat cutter.

I've always loved this photo of her.

I love that she was about to drive the car.

Elsie and her husband Jack.

He made sailboat sails 

when he wasn't working as a presser

at the local men's store.

Elsie with my dad

at the beach near our house.

This photo was taken during the time period 

when my parents renovated a small lake cottage 

into the house where I would be born and grow up.

* * *

Elsie loved to piece quilt tops.

She tried to teach me to stitch huck toweling.

I can still hear her ~

"the back needs to look as good as the front."

(I learned the fine art of unstitching early on)

One of her unfinished tops became Elsie's Broken Dishes.

Another rescue project became Elsie's Aprons.

Still another became Elsie's Pinwheels.

(my sister and I both slept under this one as children)

One of her hand-embroidered table cloths became Elsie's Embroidery.

* * *

If you look near the top of the sidebar,

you'll see that I've added a new page to this blog.

Rescues and Legacies

features more of my quilts

like the ones in this post.

Family quilts and others

that are now part of life at our house ~

and very much a part

of my quilting passion.

Still a work in progress,

I'll continue to tweak this new page

going forward.

* * *

And yes, my minor in college was history.

* * *

Be back soon!

Quiltdivajulie

Quilts at Christmas ~ Part 1

I love using our family quilts when decorating for Christmas. My maternal grandmother's quilt Elsie's Broken Dishes serves as the "ground" for my mother's collection of lighted houses. The last time I put out Mom's village, the quilt was still a lumpy, yarn-tied comforter. This year, I am so happy with the way the quilting and new borders add to the "look" (you can see my earlier post for this rescue quilt here). [...and the lighted ceramic Christmas tree in the center of the display was one of our wedding gifts. It was made by a sweet neighbor-lady who lived down the street from me when I was growing up in Michigan.]

In the coming days, I'll be sharing more photos... but for now, I will share with you a link to one of my MOST favorite holiday CDs ~ Behold The Lamb of God by Andrew Peterson. Here's a portion of what he wrote on his website about this album: "What makes this bunch of songs unique is that I wanted to remind (or teach) the audience that the story of Christmas doesn’t begin with the birth of Jesus. Many people tend to forget or have never even learned that the entire Bible is about Jesus, not just the New Testament. So the musical begins with Moses and the symbolic story of the Passover (Passover Us) and works its way through the kings and the prophets with their many prophecies about the coming Messiah (So Long, Moses) to the awful four hundred years of silence before God told Mary she’d be having a baby (Deliver Us). After the song called Matthew’s Begats, which lists the genealogy of Jesus, the story picks up in more familiar territory with Mary and Joseph and the actual birth (It Came To Pass, Labor of Love). The final song is called Behold, the Lamb of God, which ties together the Passover and the beauty and scope of the story."