Whose We Are

I began another quilt yesteray.  I love the whole process of choosing a pattern, buying fabric, cutting, piecing, quilting and binding.  Each time I work in my sewing room with my modern gadgets and computerized sewing machine, I look over on the dresser where I see a shadowbox containing mementos from my grandmother, Anna Mary Bechtol Porr.  One of the items is a quilt block from one of the myriad quilts she made.  It is hand quilted.  Perhaps some of the fabric was purchased, but the stars were made from scraps of the remnants of a dress or skirt.  Many of the quilts she made were hand pieced.  She didn't have a sewing room - her machine was set up in either the dining room or her bedroom.

I don't know how old Anna was when she began to quilt.  I assume it was when she was quite young.  Her sister Nellie Bechtol Patterson was an accomplished quilter, who in her lifetime made over 500 quilts!  Of course, they were all quilted by hand.  In a newspaper article featuring her prowess, Aunt Nellie recalls that she first learned to quilt when she was five years old - on a set of frames that she used to that very day!  In this same article it said that among her keepsakes was a quilt that her mother, Barbara Ellen Asire Bechtol made using her mother's dresses.  Last year as I was doing some genealogical research on the Asire family, I came across pictures of that very same quilt.  The power of Google!   

I try to picture a grieving Barbara, 33 years old with a young family of her own, washing her mother's dresses, cutting, piecing, and then handquilting the entire quilt.  I hope she found peace and comfort in creating this wonderful keepsake.

Truman Madsen, author and religious scholar, said, "You don't know who you are until you know whose you are."

I never knew my grandmother, Anna.  Likewise my mother never knew her grandmother, Barbara.  My grandmother Anna was born just three years before her grandmother died. As I have gathered their stories they have become real to me.  But as I carry on their wonderful tradition, I feel them close to my heart.  Thank you, Mom, for passing on the skills that began with your Great-grandmother, Elizabeth Conrad Asire teaching her daughter, Barbara, who taught your Mother.