Stitching memories
Old quilts deserve an honored place in our homes



Thrifty. Spare. Practical. Useful. These are words I associate with my home. If I can’t use a special thingamabob everyday, then I don’t need it. If the thingy will just sit around and collect dust, I don’t bother. I can’t bother — I don’t dust. Not often, anyway. Tchotchkes find few homes in mine.
So, why am I still thinking of the old comfort, as my grandmother calls thick patchwork quilts, I saw at a flea market this weekend" Handicrafts are not baubles that gather dust where they’re set. Handmade linens and blankets are made with time and love, probably by a woman’s hands in stolen moments after all other chores are done

Some have been made because there was no other economical way to decorate a home, or dress a baby, or cover a child’s head, while others are pure expressions of art. When I sit down with my crocheting, I feel connected to the women who came decades and even hundreds of years before me who shared the same craft.

When I quilt, I know that people all over the world have used the same hand motions, and similar materials, to create beautiful and practical things to enrich their lives.

At the flea market, the blanket lay there, discounted 50 percent to a mere $10. The comfort was made from polyester slacks and dresses with the ugly patterns and textures used in the 1960’s and ’70’s. It was gray and brown, with thin pink acrylic yarn tufts stitched through.
I didn’t buy it. Could I justify paying for a not-so-attractive quilt when it has no family meaning for me" My grandmothers and I quilt, and so do our friends. I have many quilts, and few beds to hold them. But this quilt drew my eye. There it lay, undervalued and unappreciated. Practically worthless at $10 and still not plucked from the market’s wares.

Few people value these polyester blankets, but in them I glimpse a portion of the personality that formed in everyone of my grandmother’s generation. Raised in the Great Depression, people her age used everything they had until it couldn‘t be used anymore. That meant that clothes that couldn't be mended were made into braided rugs or quilts or cushions.

Collectors don’t like these blankets: They’re not old enough to be collectible, and they’re not pretty or flowery or shabby chic. The quilter’s children don’t value them; they’re just Dad’s cut up old shirts (that he probably wasn’t quite finished with). But I ached when I left that comfort behind, knowing that I couldn’t justify the expense (paltry) or the space to store it (considerable).

The trouble is, I found a hand-hooked rug table covering, too, and I couldn't justify getting that one either. It was a little bit more expensive, but dirt-cheap if I’d really been out antiquing instead of just squandering an hour or two. The rug also sat there, unsold, victim to those crazy polyester materials, worn and slightly faded even so.

But just last week, Grandma and I were discussing how she’d wanted to take up rug-hooking, and I had thought I might try my hand at it, too. Grandma said she’d given up the idea when Grandpa told her it wasn’t worth doing, because he’d done it, himself, when he was a boy. The skills he dismissed as average in his generation are now revered two generations later.

Even though I don’t have my own hooked rug on display — on my floor where it would be useful — I knew the flea-market rug could sit on a shelf somewhere among the many books I can’t make myself get rid of.

After I found the rug, I found a doll-sized granny-square afghan, also priced for a pittance. The vendor had it marked as a knitted quilt. The afghan was crocheted, and worn a bit thin, and faded from slight age. The crochet stitches weren’t perfect, which meant, to me, that someone had simply wanted to make something for the love of making and giving it.

Some handicrafts aren’t meant to be showcased. They’re just meant to be enjoyed.

I love the soft, faded smoothness of a thin, worn quilt that has been washed and dried over decades. I wanted to pass this tactile love on to each of my children, so I hand-stitched new quilts for both when I was expecting them.

My grandmother taught me to stitch small squares together when I was five years old. Now, she spends her retirement piecing together by hand beautiful, intricate designs to celebrate the family’s birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and babies. I’m a lazy quilter, because my babies’ quilts are made up of either four or nine large blocks. Rather than quilt an outline or a design in each triangle, square, or strip of the coverlet like my grandmother does, I made a single stitch in each large piece -- just enough to hold the quilt together.

My simple, hand-sewn stitches tend to come apart in the wash, so I mend the blankets with poor hem stitches that manage to hold the squares and strips together for a few more washes. Washing the quilts is a delicate balancing act: The quilts can’t achieve the loved and worn look they need to be true children’s blankets without all the washings (and dirt!) to prove they were well-used, but they’re too delicate to be washed often.

Already, the children’s blankets are soft and comfy, almost like the old family quilt I remember using as a child. No one remembers who made the old one but Grandma thinks her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, may have. Now, it hangs as a curtain in my bedroom so I can see it each day. I hate to think of it draped, one day, over an old chest in a flea market, marked down because of its ripped stitches and tattered edges.

Those beautiful handicrafts left behind at the flea market won‘t be unwanted for long. If I don’t go back and snag them first, someone will come along and buy them up. They aren’t museum-quality pieces to be locked away and preserved. Hopefully, their buyers will use and display them the way they were meant to be used — with love.