A visit to the quilt museum

I had an assignment at the New England Quilt Museum on Tuesday, my first day back from vacation. I brought Nana Lord's quilt along for the ride with the hope of getting an opinion on how to clean the darn thing.

So I walked through the Paul Pilgrim exhibit and got terribly intimidated. Nice quilts. He was an antiques dealer who collected quilts; he became enamoured of "orphan blocks," the quilt blocks he'd just find lying around, uncompleted and unloved. He'd buy them, but they really didn't have a market, and then he decided to take up quilting himself and he used the blocks to make all kinds of cool quilts. There were quilts with different size blocks, quilts with applique, quilts with really bad blocks, and they were all just awesome.

Anita, the museum's curator, told me Pilgrim had been from a drycleaning family and was meticulous when it came to cleaning and pressing his blocks (ironing, of course, is a big part of quilting or any sewing for that matter). Unfortunately, Paul Pilgrim died of a rare family cancer, so the perfect person to ask about how to clean my grandmother's quilt is dead. I wonder if I'll have to resort to the Ouija board, like Mark Arsenault and I did back at The Gardner News when the mayor wouldn't comment on the status of the police department? (I wonder if Manca still holds a grudge for that? Against Mark, of course, because I'm the good reporter in the good reporter/bad reporter game)

But anyway, I took the quilt into the library and talked with the awesome library ladies, who unfolded the thing and then oohed and aahed. They said they'd never seen one quite like it, with the holidays and seasons, and were intrigued when I told them it was one in a series she'd made. They gave me the contact info for the MassQuilt documentation project, which is looking for much older quilts, but they thought because of the nature of Nana Lord's quilts, they might be interested.

Their verdict on the cleaning: don't even try. There are just too many fabrics in it, and too many silks, and too many fabrics in bad condition, and I might be making things worse. Spot cleaning may be possible, though.

One of the women (great reporter that I am, I didn't take notes or get names) wondered about the significance and source material of the white and gold thread patches, since they appear in several places. They're probably not from a tie; were they from a party dress? Something significant? Or was Nana Lord just being thrifty with a fabric she'd found?

As far as displaying it, hanging is definitely out. I wasn't keen on hanging it anyway -- where do you hang a worn, multicolored crazy quilt anyway? -- but I would like to have it out, somewhere. They suggested a quilt rack, and said I should make sure to refold it, in quarters, every so often so it wouldn't get creased. Which leads to another quilt mystery -- the thing does not crease. It has no batting inside, it's made from all these silks, you'd think it would be a mass of wrinkles, but no, it's always been iron-straight (except around the edges, where Nana Lord wasn't quite so careful sewing the new back on but, I repeat, the woman was in her 80s, cut her some slack).

My father thinks there was at least one quilt made per brother, and my mother believes Uncle John's was on a Spanish theme, since he and his wife went to Spain on their honeymoon. I have to dig up my scrapbook; the Ipswich Chronicle wrote about her quilts at one point and I have a copy of the article.

And now, for something completely un-quilt related

Because it's fun to experiment with html!

The story of the quilt

Whenever I was sick, my mother would take out "Grammy's quilt" and I would lose myself in the patches. It was backed in black satin, slippery and cool to the touch, and no two patches were alike. Oh sure, some of the fabric repeated, but the shapes were always different -- and there's really not a straight line to be found.

Grammy is what we called her, to differentiate her from Nana, my other grandmother. But all the other cousins called her Nana, so eventually we just started calling her Nana Lord.

Ruth Lord lived to be 98 years old. She raised five sons, then turned around and raised a batch of my cousins as well. And her hands were always busy.

Nana Lord would always come to our house with something to sew. She made an entire series of crazy quilts, one for each son, and ours arrived in 1971. Each quilt celebrated something different -- ours had patches for each holiday and family occasions, but her other quilts had different themes. I remember her working on one with presidential signatures. These went to other cousins, family members, friends. I don't know how many she ended up creating -- she never kept track.

Family lore has it that she started making quilts as a way to use the fabric from my great-grandfather's tie collection. It certainly explains some of the ugly fabrics. Silks, satins, polyesters -- you'll find them all here. Over the years, she'd throw in scraps from old clothes and other projects. She claimed at one point there's even a tie from John Updike's family, who she used to babysit, but she never could remember which patch it was, or if it was in our quilt at all.

Our family quilt wasn't carefully put away and preserved for future generations. It was made to be used, and used it certainly was. By day, it would hang on the back of my mother's rocking chair in the living room, with the sun from the picture window slowly bleaching patches. By night, especially in winter, it would move to the couch where we'd fight over who got to sit on the sides with the special patches. And we'd rub the velvet mitten or poke at the stuffed heart for Valentine's Day or admire the sparkles in the gloriously rainbow striped patches or look for our names on the birthday cake. We'd spread it on the floor. When our friends slept over, it was usually what went over their sleeping bags when they slept on the mattress on the floor -- and the quilt, more than likely, would ride with us the next morning when, over and over again, we'd ride that mattress down the stairs before putting it back on the bench in my father's office.

My parents gave me the quilt for my 39th birthday this week. It's a delicate shadow of itself. My grandmother did repair it sometime in the late-80s, early-90s, replacing patches and adding an entirely new backing (and, it should be noted, she had to have been in her 80s when she did it -- through her mid-80s, she used to talk about going to "help out the old people" at senior housing), but it still shows signs of wear. And why not? It's a respectable 35 years old.

I could put it away in a box. But what fun is a quilt if you can't look at it? So I spread it out on the bed and invited my children to climb on. And we looked at all the patches. They counted the stars in the Flag Day flag. They cooed over the duck in the spring patch, fought over which patches were "theirs," touched and felt and asked questions.

So here's my challenge: can this quilt be fixed, again, for a new generation? Can it be cleaned, re-patched with vintage fabrics -- I'm not talking cotton prints from Wal-Mart here -- preserved?

And is this the only Ruth Lord quilt that still exists?

The whole quilt and nothing but the quilt.

Here's what it looks like all spread out. Individually, some of the fabric is really ugly -- it's made from old ties! -- but all together, it's really wonderful.

Square 1

We have a lot of winter in New England -- or at least it seems that way. And it looks like Nana Lord felt the same way, too. She certainly saved one of the biggest patches in the quilt for it -- ice! snow! cold! Don't forget your mittens and boots and here -- take this shovel! I bet if she made this post-1978, she would have thrown in some canned goods, too.

Square 2

Always sign your quilts! It makes it so much easier 35 years down the line, when your granddaughter gets ahold of the quilt, decides to put it on the Internet and wonders "just how old is this quilt, anyway?" I don't remember when this quilt was NOT in our family. This puts it just a year after my brother Matt was born, so I would have been 4 when she gave it to us.

Square 3

Of course my birthday is a national holiday. It's on my grandmother's quilt! Through the dirt, you can barely make out the names on the cake -- Linda, Bruce, Jenni, Matthew. There are a couple new patches next to it, the orange and pink prints.

Square 4

I look at this flag and marvel at the sheer patience my grandmother had in embroidering it. And yes, there are 50 stars -- my kids counted them.

Square 5

What do you mean, you've never celebrated Circus Day? I have a feeling Nana Lord just needed an excuse to show she could make a killer lion.

Square 6

Look at this scene! Just look at it! There's a duck, a nice pond for a backdrop, some cattails -- I never noticed her working from a sketch on the fabric, but I can't believe she did this freehand.

Square 7

Holy sun damage! Thanksgiving used to be pumpkin orange. The patch below it with the pink spots used to be BROWN -- you can see it elsewhere in the quilt. And it looks like she took out an entire patch when she repaired the quilt, as you can see by the zig-zags she usually used to mark of squares.

Square 8

One square's coming apart, another is stained with god-only-knows what, yet this candlestick is totally pristine and white. Eternal flame, eternal mystery.

Square 9

Oh god. Where to begin here? Mom and Dad's wedding bells are a MESS -- this is white velour fabric, very soft and fluffy. It was a great piece to stroke when you were home with the flu. It's FILTHY. The embroidery in the area is coming apart as well.

Square 10

Mother's Day, with lots of staining and fading. I think the pastel floral patch might be a new one -- the texture feels wrong to me.

Square 11

Easter is really dirty. How do you wash white fabric without causing the dye of the embroidery thread to run?

I remember in high school, a friend who was Catholic slept over and we were using the quilt. She remarked that it was a good thing Nana Lord wasn't Catholic, or I'd have a cruxifiction on my quilt. The mind boggles at the idea. How would Nana Lord have depicted Jesus?

Square 12

A few new patches in this area, and I definitely need to clean the baby blue with polka dots. Happy New Year 1971!

So what happened in 1971? Hang on while I Google -- OK, Nixon was president, the Pentagon Papers were published, the U.S. ping-pong team visited China, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" won the Grammy for Simon and Garfunkel, and if Nana Lord went to the movies, she probably did NOT see "A Clockwork Orange." The mind is now going to an odd place where she's wearing a bowler hat and speaking in a thick Cockney accent about ultraviolence. Dear Lord, no!

Square 13

Happy Valentine's Day! This patch received lots of love -- the velvet in the heart is all but worn away. This was a patch she stuffed to make plump, and little fingers constantly sought it out, wearing away the heart as well as the surrounding red velvet.

She did a bunch of repairs in this area -- the Valentine section used to be larger and the red, white and blue patch is a new one. Again, here's some of the lovely metallic I'll have to fix, somehow. I loved this fabric as a child and secretly still want a dress made out of it. You know, just to wear around the house. Because I can.

Square 14

Heavy repair job in this area. The patch with the sheep is new -- there was something long and skinny that was replaced.

Aren't the cards neat? Did Nana Lord gamble?

Square 15

Lots of damage here. Most of the embroidery on the yellow patch is gone -- it was some kind of symbol, two stars with a heart in the center inside two circles. I don't know what it represented.
The pink patch with the carnations is for Mother's Day. Lovely detail on the flowers. It's faded quite a bit here.

Square 16

I love the flowers against the brown velvet. And when I was little, I always used to look for that tiny patch with the pansy. The pink piece may be one of the newer pieces.

Square 17

One patch is all but worn away -- a pity, since the embroidery here was very nice.

Labor Day is the only holiday that repeats in the quilt. I don't know if it's because she added the second patch in the repair, or didn't like that patch to begin with, or maybe it was her way of making sure her grandchildren were totally pro-labor (was Nana Lord a secret union activist?), but I love this version. Her model was obviously the Arm and Hammer on the baking soda box.

Square 18

Lots of damage here, and you can see it's been repaired once before. First of all, I LOVE THIS MITTEN! It's red velvet, and she stuffed it, with a leopard cuff. You can see the velvet's all worn away and the stuffing's flattened from my brother and me constantly stroking it every time the quilt was out.

And where am I ever going to find a metallic fabric as cool as this striped patch, which is all but reduced to threads? And the soft black velour with the cool flowers?

Square 19

When Nana Lord put in the new backing, she lost about an inch around on the quilt, as you can see here with the Christmas patch. Also, this looks like another Labor Day patch, which is seen elsewhere in the quilt. I don't remember it -- was it a re-patch? There are new pieces in the area, so it might have been.

Square 20

The brown-pink-and-yellow fabric was repeated elsewhere in the quilt on an edge and was faded dreadfully by sun. This one is pretty true to the original color.

I love the lace flower. It's so delicate. I guess she ran out of holidays and just threw it in.

Square 21

What can I say? I absolutely adore the Fourth of July patch. How can you not love a firecracker? It's another one that was frequently rubbed, but the corduroy held up well.

Square 22

I'm pretty sure the stains on this one was from spilling hot chocolate on it the Christmas that Mr. Hurley dressed up as Santa and went door-to-door with presents. I got a Dawn doll with a white and gold dress who had her hair up. The dress matched the patch with the stains. This is probably why I remember it so vividly.

There are a few new patches here -- definitely the maroon one with spots and the white one with vivid pink flowers.

The May Day basket has always been one of my favorites. I love the detail. Maybe it subconsciously influenced my choice of wedding date, May 1, 1994.

Square 23

This holiday patch amuses me. I can just picture her thinking "April Fool's Day, April Fool's Day -- what the heck am I going to put for April Fool's Day? Screw it, I'll just write down the day. April Fool's, you don't get a picture!" Whenever the quilt was folded up, this invariably was the square that showed.

Square 24

This part of the quilt needed heavy repairs. Nana Lord replaced the first St. Patrick's Day, which was a green satin with a shamrock applique, with this print. It's not as elaborate, but cut the woman a break -- she was in her 80s when she repaired it!

Square 25

Look at how pretty spring is! I especially love the dragonfly.

Square 26

This is one of the areas where Nana Lord did some repairs -- and I need to continue the work in one of the patches right over Memorial Day. This black patch matched the original backing of the quilt, a very shiny satin.

Square 27

I love the Father's Day profile -- did anyone in our family ever smoke a pipe? You can see from the difference in color fade on the patch that some of the patches around it have been replaced and repaired. The maroon piece with dots is new, as is the blue print and the teal floral.

Square 28

Here, you can see where she added some pieces -- the bright orange flowers and the blue print replaced other patches when she repaired it.

This is the only patch that celebrates a month instead of a holiday or season. I think she may have just blanked and embroidered "August" instead of "Summer." (Summer, of course, already has the patch with the cool duck, so she may have just said "whatever, here's a boat.") Nice boat, though. And here's where I learned that two curved lines can make it look like there are birds in the sky when you draw. Hey, it was pretty impressive to the rest of the first graders.

Square 29

Square 30

Final square, a bit of fraying on one patch and a loss of stitch on the autumn patch. My daughter loves the squirrel.