The one thing I couldn’t bring myself to let go in the estate sale we held to get rid of Mom’s things was her quilts.
By “her” quilts
, I don’t mean that she made them all (though she did make a couple
, and one of those is safely tucked in our closet to be used this winter, assuming it gets cold enough to justify a quilt), but that she’d been given them by various family members over the years. She kept them safe and rarely used any of them after my father passed many years ago.
At the same time I didn’t want to sell them for prices that would frankly insult the women who made them (if any of those women were still alive), I have no real use for any of them beyond the one – largely because they’re much smaller than the king-size bed hubby and I are currently using. It’s unlikely we’ll downsize our bed until or unless one of us dies, and keeping a quilt (or more) against that hopefully-not-too-soon day seems like overkill.
So I wondered what to do with them. They’re labors of love, each one, and should be appreciated for that… oh, hey! There are museums for everything!
I went online and found a ton of quilting museums. Bingo! Problem solved!
After sending emails to a couple that were ignored, I finally found a museum that would take them.
No, that’s not right. The lady I spoke with was *thrilled* to get them, especially when I told her that Mom had documented who made each one. I sent photos with Mom’s original documentation and told her that I’d add more to those brief entries before I shipped the quilts – because Mom’s documentation was sometimes something like, “This quilt was made by Grandmother B after Z’s birth.” Or, “D made this as a hostess gift when she came to visit with R.”
So I’ll be filling out the details – full names, dates of birth and death, etc. – and also scanning in pictures of my grandmothers and aunts so those who come to see the quilts will know a little about the women who made them. That’s my project for this afternoon.
