This quilt is My Mom’s Crazy Quilt. I first discovered when I was going through some boxes after mom died. I found several quilts that had been made by my aunt and grandmother which as some of my most cherished possessions. But then I found a box of fabric scraps and this unfinished crazy quilt. At the time, I thought this was the ugliest quilt I had ever seen. Not one of those beautiful silk and velvet crazy quilts with all the embroidery, but just a mishmash of cotton fabrics sewn helter skelter on some old cotton sacks. But in twenty years times change and so do tastes. Now, when I’m especially missing my mom, I can take out this quilt and touch the fabric that she touched and give it a hug.
I don’t recognize any of the fabrics as being mom’s dress, or the kitchen curtains, or a sundress that I wore. They are all from “before my time”. I don’t know when she started making the blocks, but the foundation fabric is old sugar and flour sacks; you can still see the printed label on some. Some of the fabric pieces are feed sacks, too. But others are pieces that I’m sure were from dresses because of the quality of the fabric. And some must have been curtains that hung in homes I never knew. I have a letter my mom wrote to her mom in 1934 stating she had just ordered some fabric to make new curtains for the house they were living in on a farm near Herman, Nebraska. That old house still stands, although the roof is gone and there is a tree in the middle of the house now. And perhaps this quilt contains some of the fabric that she was so excited about. What a wonderful thought.Let’s take a look at some of the prints in this delightful, and not at all ugly, crazy quilt.
