"Piecin' A Quilt's Like Livin' a Life" |
||
| A Tumbling Blocks (Cross Variation) quilt credited
to Margaret Younglove Calvert (1829-1920), the mother of Lida Calvert Obenchain
("Eliza Calvert Hall") is part of the quilt collection of the
Kentucky Museum.
The quilt uses the Baby Blocks pattern to create a variety of optical effects within a cross and a field resembling an hourglass. Margaret Calvert's skill with a needle made her sisters, Jane and Mary, pause before offering their assistance. "Mary says she is so particular," wrote Jane, "perhaps we could not do it good enough we would take just as fine stitches as we could." Lida also sewed and quilted, but did not profess to be as good as her mother. She did, however, use quilts to explain "Aunt Jane's" philosophy of life. For the elderly Aunt Jane, quilts are history, autobiography, imagination and memory--the monuments to ordinary women's lives and unheralded "women's work." A quilt also symbolizes the challenge of living and the role of faith. "The Lord sends us the pieces," she observes, "but we can cut 'em out and put 'em together pretty much to suit ourselves." At first, life "looks pretty much like a jumble o' quilt pieces before they're put together; but when you get through with it, or pretty nigh through, as I am now, you'll see the use and the purpose of everything in it. Everything'll be in its right place." |
||
| Click here to return to
information about Aunt Jane Click here to return to main text-only page Click here for Eliza Calvert Hall Biography Click here for list of published work Click here for information about "Aunt Jane" Click here for information about the Kentucky Building collection |
||
Click here to return to graphics page All images courtesy of Department of Library Special Collections, Western Kentucky University. Site designed by Lynn Niedermeier, University Archives and maintained by University Libraries Web Site Team. © 2002 Western Kentucky University. Last modified September 3, 2002. URL: http://www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/lco/TextOnly/quilt.htm |