Quilting My Family Tree

My passion is quilting and I use my scissors to cut up fabric and then I sew it back up in a myriad of patterns. As a young girl I thought that quilting was something that only grownups could do. I would thumb through the worn pages of my Mom’s quilting books to admire the beautiful patterns and I relished the quiet moments sitting with my Grandma Nancy at her kitchen table watching her hand sew. The needle making graceful dives into the fabric between her nimble fingers. Fabric pieces joining together was magic to me and It wasn’t until I was much older that Grandma Nancy offered to give me small sewing lessons during our holiday visits to Pennsylvania.

My love for sewing grew with every stitch and in high school I sewed clothes and interned with a local designer making wedding dresses for her small boutique. Once when I was visiting my Grandmother’s house, I saw an unfinished quilt top in her basement. She told me that it was made by my Great Grandmother Giacoma and Great Aunt Mary. They always worked on quilts together and mostly gave them to the community to raffle for fundraisers. The only completed quilt that my family still had has always been on the twin bed in my Grandmother’s guest room. They died in 1948 and 1960 respectively so this top must have been made around 1940 or so. It was beautiful and I wanted to own it. At that time I didn’t have any particular use for it, but I liked the connection to family history. I had grand plans for adding a border and finishing the whole thing. It turned out that even finishing a quilt top is a lot of work and was outside of my abilities. I didn’t end up doing anything but put it in a box with other fabric where it waited for twenty years.

Over those years I spent time exploring a variety of crafts and only sewed on occasion then, the pandemic hit. I pulled out all my usable fabric to make masks for friends, family and community members. During that process, I found the queen sized quilt top. Running my hands across the fabric, I admired the alternating pattern of plain white blocks and leaf patchwork in a curvy green design. It was even bigger than I remembered. I was transported back to Grandma Nancy’s warm kitchen, this was the work of women she knew, women she loved, their hands had cut, pieced, and sewn the fabric. Now my hands, 80 years later, could bring new life to their work. I wanted to honor the memories of my ancestors and of the woman who let me sew my first stitches under her watchful eye.

I knew I needed to do something special and an idea for Christmas presents for my family came to me. There are seven descendants left from my mother’s side of my family, including myself. It was October, surely there would be time to get six quilts done before the holiday. Taking scissors to this piece of family history gave me a slight wave of hesitation but, I knew that sharing the quilt is what Giacoma and Mary would have wanted. I got out my trusty scissors and got to work.

When the blocks were cut apart there were seventy leaf blocks to use. I created additional replica leaf patchwork blocks with varying green fabric that I had in my stash. This gave me ten original blocks for each quilt and then some extras to make the overall pattern complete. I worked hard to make sure that every person’s quilt matched their preferred colors and that the layout of the quilt spoke to the personality of the person. After many drawings, snips, and rearrangements I pieced all the quilts together. I built upon the basics Grandma Nancy had shown me and I taught myself how to free motion quilt and make bindings. After hundreds of hours of work the quilts were complete. There were turquoise stars for my sister Jenna, an Irish chain in William Morris prints for my Mom, green stripes for my sister Colleen, a sedate modern look for my brother Mac, and vibrant quilts for my two aunts. All the quilts are different but each unmistakably connected by those original, beautiful green leaf blocks.

I made labels for each quilt out of the plain white blocks from the original which explained how Giacoma and Mary had pieced ten of the leaf blocks. Some of the quilts I sent to their new owners and some I was lucky to give to my family in person. At first they thought it was just a beautiful quilt, when I explained the history, there was no holding back the tears. You could feel the love in the room and I know Nancy, Giacoma and Mary were smiling right along with us. It was gratifying to give everyone a piece of my heart along with a part of our shared family history.

Since then, I have made a lot more quilts and found a passion that I didn’t even realize was within me. Quilting is not just for adults, it is for everyone and I hope through my work generations of my family will feel connected, inspired, and loved. The six family members who received the quilts have been grateful and supportive of my new hobby. Some relatives have even given me other quilts that people in our family have made. It is an honor to carry on the work of my ancestors and to be trusted to carry on the tradition of quiltmaking in my family. Right now I am working on a quilt using the ten original blocks that I saved for myself. Every cut, every stitch is a reminder of the past and celebration of the future. Every quilt, magic.