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Highlands Today

Quilts are patchwork memories

Minor Musings

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By Joyce Minor | Highlands Today

Published: July 5, 2009

My mother and I have almost finished making a crib quilt and matching bumper pads for my first grandchild, due Aug. 4. The quilt is blue and lavender with wildflowers embroidered on the blocks. It's also going to have our names and the date embroidered on the back.

I hope my granddaughter will keep her baby quilt for a lifetime and pass it down to her own children some day. My mother has put so much hard work and love into it. At 82, who knows if she will live to see this little girl grow up, but she deserves to be remembered by her and all the generations to follow.

Quilts are a tradition in our family. My maternal grandmother, Celesta Batterbee, loved quilting. She made many beautiful quilts while raising 11 children on Trails End Farm in Northern Michigan. She made even more quilts after the children were grown, and she and my grandfather had left the farm to live in a little house in the village of Bellaire, Mich.

I remember visiting her there and watching her at her old treadle sewing machine, piecing quilt blocks into intricate patterns. I always wondered how she could get them to fit together so perfectly without even a pattern, but she did. I also remember going up to her attic and seeing quilt tops stretched out on wooden frames waiting to be hand quilted. They were so beautiful.

We always saved our outgrown dresses and shirts for Grandma to cut into quilt blocks and it was great fun to look over each new quilt and spy pieces of garments we recognized. I especially remember one she did in the crazy quilt pattern made entirely of old silk neckties from all the men in the family. My cousin Rick still has that quilt.

When I got married, Grandma pieced all the blocks for a double wedding ring quilt for me.

When she died, all 11 of her children were at the funeral along with a crowd of grandchildren and great-grandchildren numbering more than 100.

That day we all decided to establish an annual Batterbee family reunion. Responsibility for planning and hosting it would be passed to a different one of the 11 children each year. That was in 1970 and the annual reunion is still going. Though only five of the 11 remain, the descendants of those who have passed continue to take their parents' turn hosting the reunion.

To defray expenses, each reunion day also includes an auction of family-related heirlooms and items handmade by family members. Grandma's quilts have been bought and sold back and forth between family members but never allowed to go outside the clan. Now, several members of the younger generation have taken up quilting, following in Grandma's footsteps.

I remember at one of the first few reunions, someone brought an old rusty flatiron to sell. No one seemed to want it. They couldn't even get a bid on it till my mother stood up and recalled when she was a little girl watching Grandma place that iron on the old kitchen woodstove to heat. She demonstrated how Grandma would lick a finger to dab at the tip of the iron to test it, finally hearing the sizzle that told her it was ready. And ready for what? Ironing quilt blocks, of course.

Suddenly, there was a bidding war for that iron and it brought a pretty price - almost as much as one of Grandma's quilts.

101 and counting
This is my 101st Minor Musings column. It seems impossible that I have been doing this every week for two whole years. What's even more amazing is that I have managed to find 101 different things to write about.

It hasn't always been easy. Sometimes, I sit and stare at an empty page for hours. Each time I think the well has run dry. But then a reader e-mails me a suggestion or my family gets to discussing and laughing about something, and I find myself grabbing a pen to jot down column ideas.

I'm grateful for every inspiration that comes my way. I hope readers and friends will keep them coming to: jomin8549@gmail.com.

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