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This Tumbling Blocks (Cross Variation) quilt is credited to Margaret
Younglove Calvert (1829-1920), the mother of Lida Calvert Obenchain ("Eliza
Calvert Hall"). It 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."
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