Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

One of my passions in quilting in addition to creating colorful quilts is Redwork Quilts. A show was held this past year in New York of a lady whose main passion was redwork quilts, and she provided one of the most cheerful quilt shows made memorable by redwork quilts, and I was so inspired by getting to see it virtually.

I will try and remember to add a redwork quilt now and then from my saved archives of quilts so any passerby here can enjoy it also.

Visual Arts Rule!!!! ... quote by freedombecki.

 

[freedombecki]

This quilt was machine embroidered, pieced, and quilted by me, then donated as a fund-raiser to the Casper, Wyoming Symphony several years ago
​

I remember it being a joy to work on as the lovely musical instruments were sewing out on my Pfaff computer embroidery machine, my excitement of sewing on the zany notes of a Timeless Treasures fabric print and many colorful fabrics from Hoffman batik group and Moda marbles. Even stitching the bias binding was fun. The hardest part was parting with this one. I'm sorry I can't transfer the details better, but this quilt has sat in photobucket a long time now. Hope you enjoy what little that can be seen. The embroidery was designed by Pfaff's staff of artists, but so much time has passed, I'm not sure if it was during the 1990's or the early part of the twenty-first century.

I loved the quilt so much, I made another in slightly different fabrics for a wounded soldier and sent it through sources to Walter Reed's for a chaplain to give to a soldier or his bereaved family. They are not allowed to tell us our gift's recipients.

​

 

[Divine Wind]

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c235/bmarsh/StarsandStripsFlag-2.jpg

I saved a picture, reduced it in size, and it's now my avatar. This quilt went to a special friend of mine in Colorado who told his mom something like, "Hey, mom. I'm ok. Really. I don't even know why they sent me home." THUMP. When his mom turned around, he'd fainted due to his head injury, and of course, she rushed him to the hospital. I love our troops. They don't want mom to worry, so they act like everything's just fine and ok... *sigh* when the opposite might be more like it.

You do beautiful work, Becki, but you have an even more beautiful heart.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks for kind words, DW. I loved doing every one of those soldier quilts, and I regularly give tops to a group here that ties tops for soldiers. My fibromyalgia case makes me so undependable I can start quilting, finish it 2 years later sometimes. So now, it's just working on designs.

Today, I took the multi-toned mortar/brick quilt to WalMart and showed the fabric area ladies the quilt top I made using their mortar and 30s reproduction fabrics from 20 different sources. They liked it. Here in Texas, everyone remembers an aunt or grandmother who had an old 30's apron or tea towels, a 30s sunbonnet quilt, or a Dresden plate quilt with 30s fabrics on it. That's why I think it's not just a passing fad. True, they're simple fabrics with objective themes--cleaning, household pets, children playing, Scottie dogs, seasons of the year, and a myriad of other pictorial themes and of course florals. They're pretty, they're prettier than they were, and people simply love 30s reproduction quilts because they're like a traditional home.

 

[Divine Wind]

Sorry to hear of your fibromyalgia. My cousin has the same ailment and know it can be very painful. It's inspiration to see you do as you do in spite of it.

What part of Texas are you living? I'm north of Ft. Worth, a little south of Decatur.

 

[freedombecki]

Sorry to hear of your fibromyalgia. My cousin has the same ailment and know it can be very painful. It's inspiration to see you do as you do in spite of it.

What part of Texas are you living? I'm north of Ft. Worth, a little south of Decatur.

Walker County, off a farm road, on a small acreage that has a lot of wild birds, two creeks and a manmade lake that was designed to look like a natural lake, and it is fed by the spring creek. The other creek, which usually has water in it year round, seems to be dry as well this awful drought year.

I love birds and animals of all kinds, even the pesky Chinese deer that do not associate with the smaller Texas native deer or vice-versa. No wonder, because they're twice the size in height.

I love dogs. Below is a Scottie dog quilt designed by me and quilted by somebody else to be given to a child in a homeless or other shelter.

 

[Divine Wind]

Not many deer up where I live, but not much water either these days. Yes, the drought is bad and not expected to get better this summer.

Nice design on the quilt!

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks. It was my pick of about 15 different renditions on engineering paper, most of which were truly and thoroughly BAD. A couple were so bad they were shocking.

IOW, it wasn't hard to pick the good one out of the bunch. The truly horrid ones were erased to start working on the next postage stamp critter--a bird. I finally got one, but it is so short and wide, I'd have to stack 4 of them on top of each other to do a quilt that would fit over a child's feet, top to bottom. Postage stamp quilts (of which the scottie is a good example) not only take ten times as long on the drawing board, they take weeks instead of days like most simple appliques.

However, I have a love for postage stamp quilts, no, that would be addiction. Or as one friend so kindly put it, as positive addiction.

Smarter people do the Burnsian scottie from Eleanor's book, Victory Quilts (below)

She has the slickest applique method out there using a fusible sheer product to make the appliques a snap. Unless she used a curved piecing method, that is.

 

[Divine Wind]

Thanks. It was my pick of about 15 different renditions on engineering paper, most of which were truly and thoroughly BAD. A couple were so bad they were shocking.

Judging by your other fine works, Becki, I think only you would think they are "shocking" bad.

Your hard work is well matched to your kind heart. Good job on the designs. Do you ever scan them and put them on the web as .pdf files or sell them?

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks. It was my pick of about 15 different renditions on engineering paper, most of which were truly and thoroughly BAD. A couple were so bad they were shocking.

Judging by your other fine works, Becki, I think only you would think they are "shocking" bad.

Your hard work is well matched to your kind heart. Good job on the designs. Do you ever scan them and put them on the web as .pdf files or sell them?

Thanks, DW, but to explain it a different way, saying "quilts" is like saying "painting." You can paint a house or an object, or you can use the word to describe all the 2-D surface objects you saw at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg on your cruise of the Baltic. That would mean you took in an indescribably rare painting of DaVinci or Russia's collection of Rembrandt paintings, of which there are only one less in number than in all of Amsterdam.

The term "quilt" encompasses a lot of different techniques--piecing, applique, making a comforter, or simply quilting two pieces of solid color cloth to make a statement in shadows created by the slight gathering of hand stitching through 3 layers of cloth. If you break down applique, you can include different fields of endeavor--hand dyed, printed, or percale cloths needle-turned delicately into shapes of tradition, your own designs, or a likeness of a Rembrandt painting. You can use a machine or hand satin stitch, blanket stitch, or any of a myriad of traditional or cutting edge, self-designed embroidery master stitches to attach the applique to a background. You can make or embellish another kind of quilt with embroidery as in a redwork. The list of methods, products, and know-how of appliquing one fabric to another is endless, just like the different types of other fine art media.

In piecing, the same is true, and if he were still here, M.C.Escher might be pleased to know his paintings have inspired quilters to do changeling one-patch shapes that fly across the quilt like his pen-and-ink look black and whites did on canvas, unmarred by anything except perfect junctures in which fabrics may have been machine or hand-stitched together with precision quarter inch seam allowances. There are star pieced quilts, album block pieced quilts, bargello pieced quilts, hexagonal grandmother's flower garden pieced, curved 2-patch pieced, wedding ring, half-square triangular-pieced, quarter-squares, if you get my drift.

The dog quilt is a simple example of a postage stamp effort that resulted in a square block. When I charted out my graphs, I'd never tried to create a simply-shaped dog before, so naturally, I started out as though I were going to do a painting. To do justice to a Scottie, I'd have to create a quilt top with 20,000 half-inch squares and spend the next 2 years scouring the world for preprinted cotton fabric or dye my own, which I refuse to do. I thought about size, and of course, it was to be a little hugs quilt, so the parameter would naturally be a 40x60 inch work, give or take a dozen inches either way. Scotties, like daschunds, are visually wider than long, and I needed a way to fit over a child's body on a charity quilt. Knowing the child's mother would either not use the quilt if it were too elaborate, the 20,000 piece idea was thrown under the bus. The 40x60 idea would result in 2,400 pieces, and that would have taken a minimum of 6 months after two months of designing someone else's photograph, which would be dishonest artistically. My other recourse would be to design a square and repeat it a few times to come out well, with not too many squares on the design. The first design was taller than it was wide, and after doing a 30 hour search online, I found someone else had used what I thought I'd just "created," which told me to get back to the drawing board and do a simple square that would fit a 12-inch block perfectly, which means the user of my pattern could take her square and combine it with a world of 12" finished squares that are out there in traditional quilt land. So I went back to the drawing board with that in the back of my mind, and proceeded to go off topic, seeing if a decent Scotty could be done with just one large square. ((((((gong!!!)))))) If that were ever to be, I realized, I was not the artist to meet a challenge half way. My filled-in squares ranged from ugly to terrible to a remote likeness of a godzilla-like creature, not from Scotland, either. I remembered about the goal of the 12" square after realizing nothing was working after dozens of tries on the mid-range square idea. I sketched one out. Too tall. Another. Too long. Another, then decided to downsize. The first time I drew the final choice, I kind of liked it, but was on an improvement tear, so I kept on going. I continued my obsession for a long time, but nothing panned out that convinced me other people might like this one too. I kept looking back over at the other little dog that seemed moderately ok. Then I realized what was wrong. The squares I'd filled in were confused on account of value issues. On that particular shape, you needed dark values to define what you would like to bring out in the scottie. I took the same squares, took it to a blank page, and did two more mock ups, each with a little different values on defining squares. I took it to cloth using 1.75" unfinished squares and strips of 1.75" in the backgrounds in various links to make the 12.5" unfinished (which finishes to exactly 12.0" when joined to sash pieces). I sewed it out. It looked like it had no chin, but it did resemble a Scotty. I took out some of the browns and put black prints in the chin and other defined areas. It wasn't my usual arrangement for placing darks strategically, but it worked for that block.

I made chinless scotty into a senior pillow and donated it to Barb the go-to-senior-home gal to give to someone who'd like it. I worked hard selecting pretty sash fabrics so that at least it would be a pleasure to someone's eye. I was really pleased, even though only I knew the flaw which was less distinguished after setting it as described, but the earlier apparition was still a flagman stopping traffic to my eye.

After refining and doing more Scotty blocks, I had 4 to go. I'd chewed up a couple of weeks just getting it acceptable. The blocks just looked better if the fabrics in key areas of definition were blacker than the other prints. Only one of the blocks wasn't entirely as pleasing as the others. I left it to be my obvious flaw. Traditionally, quilters always made on square wrong on purpose in order to show their belief that God alone is perfect, and we should not go overboard on perfection, but be the imperfect beings we are, so the obvious flaw can be seen in many an early American quilt top pieced or applique. In my tradition of working on a quilt, this conservative's attitude is progressive. I just keep "progressing" until it's finished, and the imperfection stays. A great artist of impeccable taste would see what I did, but he would also know of the tradition of the obvious flaw in quilting if he were that well-read. Others might not see my obvious flaw, but someone someday will notice and hopefully, forgive it in honor of our mothers who believed in being human and not worrying so much about being perfect is a good rule of thumb to live by.

And that's how the quilt top came about. I did not see the finished quilt, do not know what the charity bees did with the top, the recipient, or whether they elected to sell it to purchase battings for other charity quilts, and I don't want to know. I made it for a poor child. Others are in charge of seeing to it that child gets a nice work for the problems he or she has seen in her or his young life. My dear husband has dementia and cannot remember how to take pictures any more, so one of my sewing sisters unbeknownst to me, took a pic of two ladies hanging it up on the bulletin board so several ladies could copy the pattern when it showed up on the bees memo to members. That's how I got a copy of the pic to send here. It's all I have except for the scraps and extra fabric I had left over to make another, possibly for a relative. Since the photograph is not all that clear in discerning dark colors from black, I will have to place squares on a cloth board, leave the room for a day, and come back the next day to figure out if it will be clear enough to have the same impact as the first quilt had.

In the meantime, I have some other charity quilt projects going, and it may be a year before I get back to the Scottie project. The fabrics are safe in clear plastic storage containers with hopefully leak-proof lids until that time comes around. Next time I will make an effort to find and use the digital camera I bought but am frightened of. My last effort to take a picture was when we visited the Golden Gate Bridge at San Fran Bay. The clouds were hugging the bridge like Carl Sandberg's poem like "little cat's feet." The brilliant orange posts were beautifully surrounded by the wisps, so beautiful and present "snap" when the clicker. When the picture came back, I had two ugly poles sticking out of a white mass. It couldn't have been less aesthetic. I haven't done photography since. So camera's are objects of yuk to me now and likely forever.

If you're still reading, at least one of us is awake. It's nite nite time for me.

Best wishes, everyone & have a lovely evening.

My heart goes out to the families of those dear Navy Seals who gave their lives for country by trying to find and rescue a fellow Seal who was trapped somewhere in Afghanistan's mountain terrain. May God himself comfort the families of the 38 soldiers, from here and abroad, who died in the attack. And may he comfort all the loved ones of American soldiers who have passed in the line of or as a result of their duty to this country.

 

[Divine Wind]

If you're still reading, at least one of us is awake. It's nite nite time for me.

Best wishes, everyone & have a lovely evening.

My heart goes out to the families of those dear Navy Seals who gave their lives for country by trying to find and rescue a fellow Seal who was trapped somewhere in Afghanistan's mountain terrain. May God himself comfort the families of the 38 soldiers, from here and abroad, who died in the attack. And may he comfort all the loved ones of American soldiers who have passed in the line of or as a result of their duty to this country.

Yes, Becki. I read it all. You obviously put a lot of effort into your work. I tried quilting once when visiting my sister in Colorado, but it was a lot more work than I wanted to spend on the machine. That was just trying to sew it, not design it. You are light years ahead of me in both skill and expertise on that scale.

Agreed about the families of our troops. They are the ones who truly suffer. I know for a fact every warrior in the service of our nation wants to be there. No one wants to die, but we all know the risks. We also know that everybody dies, so the choice is quality of life vs. quantity of life. Those men died busting their asses to make a difference. To make the world a better place. That's a very noble cause indeed and well worth dying for. I just wish our elected lawyers and businessmen sitting in Congress understood that difference a little better.

 

[freedombecki]

If you're still reading, at least one of us is awake. It's nite nite time for me.

Best wishes, everyone & have a lovely evening.

My heart goes out to the families of those dear Navy Seals who gave their lives for country by trying to find and rescue a fellow Seal who was trapped somewhere in Afghanistan's mountain terrain. May God himself comfort the families of the 38 soldiers, from here and abroad, who died in the attack. And may he comfort all the loved ones of American soldiers who have passed in the line of or as a result of their duty to this country.

Yes, Becki. I read it all. You obviously put a lot of effort into your work. I tried quilting once when visiting my sister in Colorado, but it was a lot more work than I wanted to spend on the machine. That was just trying to sew it, not design it. You are light years ahead of me in both skill and expertise on that scale.

Agreed about the families of our troops. They are the ones who truly suffer. I know for a fact every warrior in the service of our nation wants to be there. No one wants to die, but we all know the risks. We also know that everybody dies, so the choice is quality of life vs. quantity of life. Those men died busting their asses to make a difference. To make the world a better place. That's a very noble cause indeed and well worth dying for. I just wish our elected lawyers and businessmen sitting in Congress understood that difference a little better.

I feel the same way about your projects on the welding thread. The great thing about researching other artistic and practical works media is it's ok to be vicarious in enjoying someone else's good accomplishments. I couldn't carry a piece of equipment to make a park bench, much less a wheeled Kayak carrier, and holding a screwdriver makes my hand shake. (true) But a threaded needle, scissors and some fabric, on the other hand--smooth sailing.

 

[Divine Wind]

I feel the same way about your projects on the welding thread. The great thing about researching other artistic and practical works media is it's ok to be vicarious in enjoying someone else's good accomplishments. I couldn't carry a piece of equipment to make a park bench, much less a wheeled Kayak carrier, and holding a screwdriver makes my hand shake. (true) But a threaded needle, scissors and some fabric, on the other hand--smooth sailing.

We all have our skills, talents and interests. You are right about being able to take vicarious enjoyment out of other's accomplishments. There's no way I'll ever be able to sew or design as well as you, but I can certainly admire the work.

 

[freedombecki]

I feel the same way about your projects on the welding thread. The great thing about researching other artistic and practical works media is it's ok to be vicarious in enjoying someone else's good accomplishments. I couldn't carry a piece of equipment to make a park bench, much less a wheeled Kayak carrier, and holding a screwdriver makes my hand shake. (true) But a threaded needle, scissors and some fabric, on the other hand--smooth sailing.

We all have our skills, talents and interests. You are right about being able to take vicarious enjoyment out of other's accomplishments. There's no way I'll ever be able to sew or design as well as you, but I can certainly admire the work.

You, sir, design in three dimensions. That requires spacial awareness, awareness of negative and positive space in all 3 dimensions. I took note of the symmetry you use in order to create a work that will roll on wheels without going cattywumpus. You have the same bases in your media as any sculptor needs to complete his construction. So don't sell yourself short.

I've done simple ART I sculptures in wood, stone, and clay. Most of them were small but had relief texture as detail sometimes (and sometimes not). I had trouble with big stuff before fibromyalgia took its toll. Sewing has always been my friendly media, especially free motion threadpainting. Lately, though, it's just been to construct little quilts for those in the community who need one.

Our quilt guild sends out a block in the newsletter each month. I made one and took it to the meeting for a raffle. The person who made a block puts her name in the hat, someone draws a name, and that person takes all the blocks home with them. We did patriotic star. Today, I finished 6 of them for another quilt, but this one will go to Barb the go-to-gal for seniors and soldiers. She recruited ladies at a senior home who are still able to sew to tie quilts for soldiers. They've done several of the patriotic tops I contributed. The patriotic star pattern is below. It was easy and fast. I completed 3-stripe sashes that will join the blocks with 9-patch squares of the same fabric as the sashes (not shown on pattern below that came from this source. The picture is a little larger if you click on it.

 

[freedombecki]

About the Patriotic Star quilt (see thumbnail above), it has stars, stripes, red, white, blue, and boucoup patriotic prints. It's just right for a wounded warrior's wheelchair, but I am at a crossroads on what to do and would like suggestions. One of the prints is a print of some truly pretty apples. The quilt measures approximately 41x62 inches. The colors are red, off-white, blue, and has a narrow border of the royal blue with white dots that compose two sides the sashes that bring out an inner border of flag blue stars on white. The sets between the sashes are small 9-patch squares with red-and-off-white stripes around the blue dot and the flag star center.

My dilemma is this: should I call the quilt "Patriotic Star?" Or should I add a larger border of the apples (I have plenty of the apples print) and call it "American As Apple Pie?" The one advantage of the Pie quilt would be if the soldier had one leg that was spared, it could keep it warm, too, on a cold winter's day plus double as a tablecloth when not in use.

I need some 2 cents. What say you?

 

[Divine Wind]

My dilemma is this: should I call the quilt "Patriotic Star?" Or should I add a larger border of the apples (I have plenty of the apples print) and call it "American As Apple Pie?" The one advantage of the Pie quilt would be if the soldier had one leg that was spared, it could keep it warm, too, on a cold winter's day plus double as a tablecloth when not in use.

I need some 2 cents. What say you?

I'm big on the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Silly, meaning I'd do whatever was easiest. Two easy quilts for two soldiers is better than one complicated quilt for one soldier. I know either way it's going to take hard work, time, effort and expense, so going for efficiency would be better in the long run, IMHO.

BTW, as I'm writing this I'm sitting in the DFW USO: USO | Dallas / Fort Worth Homepage

Do you work with veteran organizations or VA hospitals down there?

 

[freedombecki]

My dilemma is this: should I call the quilt "Patriotic Star?" Or should I add a larger border of the apples (I have plenty of the apples print) and call it "American As Apple Pie?" The one advantage of the Pie quilt would be if the soldier had one leg that was spared, it could keep it warm, too, on a cold winter's day plus double as a tablecloth when not in use.

I need some 2 cents. What say you?

I'm big on the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Silly, meaning I'd do whatever was easiest. Two easy quilts for two soldiers is better than one complicated quilt for one soldier. I know either way it's going to take hard work, time, effort and expense, so going for efficiency would be better in the long run, IMHO.

BTW, as I'm writing this I'm sitting in the DFW USO: USO | Dallas / Fort Worth Homepage

Do you work with veteran organizations or VA hospitals down there?

No. I work at home where it's quiet.

Anything and everything associated with the business world sets off my case of fibromyalgia.

I go by the John Wesley saying "Do all the good you can by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, as long as ever you can."

I truly loved my business, the customers, helping people pick their fabrics, and the rest, but fibro limited my window to pretty narrow parameters. Here, I can get the charity work I love done, and I have fewer pain episodes when I'm working on a quilt for someone else.

Ok. Simple it is.

 

[freedombecki]

Memorial Quilts

Something American women did historically was to make quilts of mourning when someone died. On the trails west, death was ever-present as wagons pushed west in groups, some broke down, and people had hardships when things didn't go well. A wagon master knew he had x amount of days before the Rocky Mountain snows began, although to this day, surprise snowstorms come both early and late even to this day.
Below are a few examples.

A Template for a traditional mourning quilt is Coffin template, available here:

The quilt is traditionally done in vey dull ot cool colors.


At womenfolk, there is a good historical account of mourning quilts. Memorial & Mourning Quilts Throughout American History

Before modern medicine the loss of beloved friends and family members was all too familiar. Childbirth was dangerous and it was a rare mother who didn't lose one or more children. Husbands were lost through war or accident. Bereavement was a part of everyday life.

Ways Quilts Were a Comfort in Grief
There was little that could be done in the face of many diseases. We tend to hope that families were able to cope with these losses better than we do today. After all, families of the past would have been so much more familiar with losing loved ones. But old letters and diaries tell that the pain of grief is timeless.
Quilts could offer some small comfort in these times of grief. One elderly woman remembers her mother getting some precious blue silk out of her own hope chest when a neighbor's baby died. "Mama and three other women set up the frame and quilted all day. First they quilted the lining for the casket, and then they made a tiny little quilt out of the blue to cover the baby." 1 If there was no wood for a coffin as occurred at times when pioneers were traveling west, the deceased might have been wrapped in a quilt replacing the coffin.
Quilts have also been used in the laying out of the deceased for viewing. Other times quilts were used to drape the coffin during the funeral service. The quilt used might have been a lovely family quilt or a special quilt owned by the church. In all these situations quilts served to convey a sense of comfort and when family quilts were used a sense of connection to the deceased's beloved family.​

 

[freedombecki]

[FONT=verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Mourning and Victorian Quilts

The 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, PA had a pronounced influence on American quilts. Traditional Colonial style quilting designs were reintroduced after 1876 and in memory of fallen Civil War soldiers, many quilts were produced in black and white, gray on gray, burgundy and deep purple from madder brown, copper brown, cocoa, and chrome dyes. These dark colors were enhanced by the period that marks the first of reliable, colorfast synthetic dyes. These dyes made fabrics easier to wash.

An example of a mourning quilt is also at womenfolk:

If she left a diary, a woman might be able to tell of her life, but back then, life was all work--from sunup to sundown to have a family, to feed, to clothe, and to warm them with the love in her heart every minute of every day. All was done by hand--there were few boxes from the store--just places to put butter, wheat to grind, and other staples of life.
[/FONT]

 

[freedombecki]

A Civil War Mourning Quilt

Mourning (or memory) quilts from back in the day were part remembrance, part necessity - clothing material was scarcer than it is now, and so reuse was almost a given when someone passed away. There weren't exactly Salvation Armies to receive the clothes, and there weren't Gaps and Bed Bath & Beyonds to replenish our closets. Today, with a renewed interest in upcycling, memory quilts are both a way to remember our loved ones as well as find a meaningful reuse for their clothing
​

The Modern Mourner: Civil War Era Mourning Quilt

Some time ago in our travels across America (when we could afford the gas) we visited a Civil War cemetary in Raleigh, North Carolina. There was information on the ages of the soldiers buried there. They were so young, I actually cried when I found that out. They thought they were defending their way of life that was being eroded by being forced to sell cotton to mills in the north rather than to a free and open world market. Now, the only "fact" presented in a lot of history books is an astonishing racist claim that the only reason for the war was to keep people indentured in an ownership/slave system.

I wonder what the 14-to-17-year old men were thinking as they were being picked off in battle? I truly do not think they were thinking about overlording slaves. That would not motivate anyone to shoot a bullet at one's former allies. Removal of earnings from their farms might motivate them to fight.

However, the first shots were fired at Fort Sumpter. That didn't end the tug-of-war, however, and I wish it had. In the end, graveyards were filled from parts of the great southwest to Maine with young men of similar ages not to mention adult family men with many children.

All had one thing in common, however: profound mourning and not-well-disguised anger that was ill-managed in its best light.

The women of the era made and sent quilts to the soldiers on their side of the future surveyed Mason/Dixon line.


​