It was a beautiful spring day, actually summer like as it was 77 degrees outside & all was bustling to get the farm cleaned up for spring. The 1st order of business was to clean out the old hog house which will be burned down so a new and improved building/shop can go in its’ place someday. Yes, we were hit by Tornado Tues 2004 and things on the farm have changed tremendously since then and this is the final clean-up to be done from that scary night.
As I walked over to the hog house, dad (my dear father-in-law) called me to a box that was reeking of mold & mildew. Here’s something for you he said as he pointed to the open box. I looked and on top there was a thread stand with 5 small spools of old thread & then 2 mildew ridden sheets. I pulled them back for further inspection of the contents and to my amazement I found 2 quilts made with love no doubt by a loving grandma somewhere. I gave them a quick once over and there was not a stitch of mold or mildew on them, just some odor that the washing machine took care of after a few runs.
One was a patchwork of various fabrics & the other was a cute little Sun Bonnet Sue & Sunny Jim quilt that surely was happy to be back in the sunshine.
We don’t know when or why the box got put in there as the hog house hasn’t been used for anything but storage since the early 70’s, but I had a mission to do now that the quilts were found & saved from the pending fire.
With no labels on the quilts & the only other immediate quilter in the family that I knew of had passed at the glorious age of 101, I was off to do some investigative work, starting with a closer inspection of the quilts. Grandma’s father had bought this farm in 1893 after coming over from Sweden & she was born here on the farm in 1899. She was a teacher, a farmers’ wife & Pastors’ wife during her lifetime and I was blessed to have many opportunities to learn from her so I could pass down her stories & traditions to our children & grandchildren. The patchwork quilt was the only style quilt I had ever seen her make as she was a thrifty woman who never threw any good piece of material away and always took in others’ scraps that were offered to her, so I am positive that she had made the patchwork quilt. With some reluctance I have to admit that the 1st dead giveaway in it was the old heavy nylon stocking she used to make the brown patch in the bottom left of the quilt bigger so it was the same size as the other squares; 2nd, each square was made of several pieces of the same fabric sewn together and lastly, the backing was an old bedspread that had been pieced in 3 long strips and brought around the front for binding, another trade mark of her quilting. I’ll be giving the seams some attention, but other than that, it will go proudly on display for future generations to see & learn from.
The other quilt is a panel and looked to be made of fairly newer fabric (within the past 20-25 yrs) and is the one I will find myself doing some further investigative work to find the quilter, but if my hunch is right I won’t have to travel far for that either.
So to end this story, the hog house went up in a “Blaze of Glory” and by some Devine intervention as if Grampa Paul & Gramma Esther, previous owners of the farm & a Lutheran Pastor & Pastor’s wife were standing by close to make sure everything went ok, a steeple appeared in the front of the hog house as it burned and I’m sure Gramma was smiling with joy to know that the lovely little forgotten quilts are now happy, safe & sound and catching up on all the love they missed out on when they were left to live in a dark dingy box in the old hog house.
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