More Bow Ties Pictures

These are more pictures of the old unfinished quilt I have. The fabrics are so interesting. Since this quilt was never finished, the fabrics appear to me to have never been washed. They are in excellent condition, at least for as old as they are. This is amazing since they must have been stored and moved many times. I had been keeping them in a cedar chest but now keep them in a special acid free box I bought.

As I said, I believe they came from my mother's family. I never saw them before I found them after my mother died. There are no family members left for me to get more information.

This is what I do know about my mother's family. Both her mother's and father's families lived in mid-Michigan since the mid- 1800's. My mother's family had come from West Virginia and I am able to trace her family back into Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. My mother was the oldest in her family, as was her mother. Her mother was a child at the turn of the century and lived in mid-Michigan (Isabella County) and went to the lumber camps with her mother who was a cook there. My grandma told me once that she and some other children went looking for berries and got lost. When the lumbermen came in for dinner (noon), they had to go find the children and were not at all happy about having to do this. My grandmother was married and my mother was born before her mother had her last children - two boys, I believe. After my great-grandmother died, my grandmother raised these boys. So my mother had two uncles, younger than she was living with her for part of her life.

I never knew of my grandma to make a quilt but don't know why she wouldn't have. She taught me how to sew. This was in the 1950's when she stayed with me during some summers when my mother had to go to college. (Oh, what I'd give to have asked her more questions about her life.) After graduating from High School, my mother attended one year of college and then started teaching a in one room rural school. She continued to take classes, while teaching, and it took her 20 years to graduate and get her degree. During some summers my mother went on campus to take classes and that's why my grandma stayed with me.

My mother saved old family things but didn't share them with me. She had old dishes that I saw and I asked her to tell me about them. She did write some notes and put in some of them. When I was a child, some of the old quilts she had were used on beds and as utility quilts to be put on the ground and such. They were not considered special. Only after my mother died, did I find special quilts that she had never used but had saved. This unfinished quilt was among them. I'll share more about the other quilts later.