Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Mary Lucille's Quilt

Dave Hyre sends this quilt which was made for his mother, Mary Lucille (Lake) Hyre. She was born and raised on Oil Creek. It now belongs to his youngest granddaughter in California.

"Lena created it for the birth of [her daughter] my mom (Mary Lucille) born 1925. It is all cotton, from feed sacks and printed cotton fabric. The backside is plain off-white muslin fabric. The embossment stitchery is carried through the reverse side. It is all hand sewn. Batting is feathers and down ! Size, 3 feet by 5 feet to fit an infant's bed or cradle."

Dave speaks about more ordinary quilts as well.
"I just remembered something unique about the handed down patchwork quilts used when I was a youngster. They had large amounts of green felt swatches [in with the pieces of old men's pants and] were darted with orange yarn!! Good grief, It never before dawned on me to link that quilting oddity of green felt to the fact that Grandpa Victor Hyre owned the pool hall in Burnsville. Thrify is what Thrifty does!!!"

"They were true 'Crazy Quilts' with no pattern, just stitched together. They weighed a ton, one could barely move under their weight. Local Boston area dry cleaners refused to take them for cleaning due to the weight!! My dad used to drive 50 miles to Plymouth twice a year to have them cleaned. They were all hand sewn. These old quilts just plain wore out mid 1960's. They had seen 50+ years of use."

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