My cousin Kathie talks about Nana Lord's quilts

My father is the youngest of the Lord brothers and the last to have kids. As a result, most of my cousins are older than me, plus they mostly lived around Ipswich and Rowley, so they had a lot more contact with Nana Lord than I did. My mother passed on my email to cousins recently; here's the story of Kathie's quilt and her memories of Nana Lord's quilting.

Here's the bits and pieces that I remember -- correctly or not -- about the quilts:

Nana had finished making one for each of her sons and decided to make them for her grandchildren, starting with the oldest and moving on down. It seemed then to be important that she gift the quilts to the grand-daughters or to married grandkids only, because she didn't make one for Robin, skipping directly to Mike and Sara. I think that irritated my mother a bit and she's decided their quilt will go to Robin.

I thought all the sons' quilts were family quilts, ie anniversaries, children's birthdays, special events, but maybe not. I notice yours is holiday themed. My parent's quilt is a family quilt. I remember it also had our own special interests on it -- for example there was a square about my 4-H sewing years. I remember too that the fabric from one of my old dresses was used in the quilt.

I'd always thought she started the themes with the grandkids.

My own quilt is the bicentennial quilt from 1976.
There was a picture of Nana and the quilt, carefully posed with it spread out over her knees and onto the floor while she worked on it, in the Ipswich Chronicle. I wonder if they archived that kind of stuff. She finished it in time for the summer celebrations so it must've been on display someplace.
Oh, yes -- I remember it was at least on display in the Grange building at the Topsfield Fair that year.

So the primary reason for my quilt was the bicentennial; that it was for me was secondary. That was Nana Lord and you had to love her for it.

I sewed a strip along the back of one edge and displayed it as a wall hanging for several years when Chuck and I were first together. Very 70s that kind of thing was back then, but I still hung it up in the bedroom when we moved into our current house, taking it down probably mid 80s when I noticed the weight of it was making it rip at the top. I had it dry cleaned and store it now in a cedar chest.

I'll take some pictures of it and email them to you when our digital camera comes back from being repaired.

Some other things I remember:

The quilts were entirely handmade except for the machine stitching the back to the front. Nana prided herself on that. She always carried a square or two of her current quilt with her to work on wherever she was. She learned most of the embroidered stitches from her schooling at Essex Aggie. There are names for them. She gave me her 'file' of stitch cards that she'd made at school when she was cleaning out her apt. at the Plantation in Rowley.

She told me the story of how she started making the quilts. I'm a little vague on it but IIRC, crazy quilts from cotton clothing were of course pretty common, but she saw one once while visiting someone made of satins and velours and thought it was beautiful. She said she decided right then and there that she would make one herself and began stockpiling old clothes made of interesting fabric.

I have the last quilt Nana was working on. I don't know who it was for but there were only a couple of squares finished. It was in the jumble of things nobody wanted, still stored at my parents house.
You're welcome to it, if you'd like.

Odd, little aside that has little to do with Nana Lord's quilts. They fascinated me and she showed me how they were made. Square of muslin with the pieces tacked on, then embroidered, then the squares sewed together. I decided to make one myself. I can't remember how old I was but I'd been working on it off and on for months. I was sewing it, all the scraps dumped around me on the living room floor, watching TV with Nancy one day, when my other grandmother -- Nana Johnson -- came running into the house, sobbing that my little cousin Vicki had just died on the operating table during open heart surgery. I dropped the quilt and never picked it up again. Superstition of a young girl, I guess. Funny what comes back when you start to remember ...

I grew up listening to the uncles (and my Dad) complain and poke fun of Nana, albeit with affection, but she was an amazingly independent woman. Loved that she couldn't be bothered with housework and that she would rather be creating something -- sewing, wedding cakes, gardening. I like to think creating is the legacy she's passed on to me. I thought it was in the sewing, but I haven't opened the sewing machine in years. Instead it's the writing.

Anyhow, I keep my house dirty in her memory. :)