A Quilt's Story

                                          A Quilt’s Story

                                    By April Smith Hajjafar

                                                   

I suppose that you might say that I am like a phoenix that rises from the ashes; a thing of beauty that comes from “nothing”, so to speak. I came from very humble beginnings back in the 1940s in Clay County, Kentucky. I do not recall exactly when in the 40s, but I know that WWII was going on during some of this time. I heard Rachel and Granny and others speak of loved ones, neighbors and acquaintances that were away overseas fighting that war. More than one tear would moisten my fabrics as the worry for loved ones spilled down cheeks.

I began as a collection of smaller pieces of fabrics, parts that were not useful independently, but when joined together became both functional and beautiful. I began as a piece of Granny’s old threadbare housedress here, a patch from Johnnie’s shirt that had grown ragged around the collar and cuffs there. There were patches from a pair of Boyd’s old britches that were beyond mending. There were also patches from the cloth sacks that the feed for the family’s animals had come in and other patches made from the sacks that the family bought their flour in. There were patches made from the small cloth bags that tobacco came in.

Some of these fabric pieces were patterned. The flour companies had been kind enough to put lovely prints on their sacks when they realized that folks were using them to make clothing, aprons, pillowcases and other items. Some of the fabric pieces were not patterned. The family could use dye bought at the store to color them if they desired. Some folks even used things found in nature to dye the muslin colored fabrics. Roots, berries, barks, leaves and other items collected from nature could add color to otherwise plain bits of cloth.

During the cold winter months when outside chores were reduced, these small pieces of cloth were cut into myriad smaller six-sided pieces by Rachel. Her mother Granny visited often and she would help Rachel cut out and piece my top. They carefully cut those smaller pieces from the different fabric scraps, taking care to keep my final pattern in mind. Then they sat with their sewing baskets at hand.  They threaded needles by the weak winter’s light coming through the window by day; and by the light of a kerosene lamp and the fire burning in the coal grate by evening and night. They sat and using needle and thread joined those smaller pieces into a larger piece. That larger piece grew ever larger. As it did, a pattern began to emerge; a pattern that had been indiscernible at first.  

During the day, there were still many chores to do. Also, the children were not more than babies and required much attention. Rachel would attend to the needs of the moment and fit in piecing my top as she could. Often, that would be later in the evening when her family had settled in for the night. Granny would help whenever she visited. Unfortunately, the time Rachel and Granny had to devote to my completion were a few moments here and a few moments there. Just as multiple patches of fabric would go into my top, multiple moments or “patches’ of time had to go into putting them together. Progress on my top was rather slow, but it continued.

                       My Grandmother and My “Grandmother”
                      Rachel Allen Nolen And Alta Allen Cantrell

Granny Mandy Allen holding Billy

Nolen and Lola Nolen Standing

Rachel had a difficult life. She had young’ uns she had to tend to. Her husband Boyd worked away in the mines during the week and would come home on the weekends. The care of those children and ensuring their survival fell much of the time to Rachel. Boyd was a very good man but he was a drinker, and he did not do it well. He would often become a different person when he drank. Rachel would hurriedly gather the children together and send or take them to the neighbor’s house before returning home to face Boyd alone when that happened.

                                 Boyd and Rachel Allen Nolen


Rachel had her hands full. She had all of the large burdens of life to deal with alongside an endless number of chores. She even had less intricate quilts that she worked on. I was a special quilt for Rachel. The others were larger strips of fabric and could be made much more quickly and were meant mainly for warmth. I was an intricate flower garden. Rachel had few flowers in her own life. Her yard was void even of grass and did not have flowers. The wildflowers of the hillsides and the redbud and dogwood blooming in the mountains provided some beauty, but I was to be a flower garden of beauty year-round. I was a labor of love to be savored. It took Rachel, with the help of Granny, a long time to complete my top.

Over the months that Rachel carefully pieced my top, she began to have a cough. This cough became more frequent and much deeper as the months passed. Sometimes Rachel’s slender frame would be nearly doubled over in a coughing fit. I saw the look of concern on Granny’s face when this happened in her presence and Granny’s usual smile would be replaced by a furrowed brow.

Finally, Rachel finished piecing my top. She planned to sandwich some cotton batting between my top and a backing made from patterned flour sacks that she had already stitched together. She planned to pull the quilting frame down from the ceiling and place me with my batting and backing onto the frame so she could quilt her garden.

Unfortunately, Rachel would never see my completion. On December 15, 1950, Rachel Allen Nolen succumbed to tuberculosis; a disease very familiar to her family. She had borne nine babies in ten years and she had borne the burdens life had thrown her way without complaint. At the time of her death, she was thirty-four years old and she left seven babies for Boyd to raise alone.

Rachel’s Babies; Ronnie in front; Billy and Fanny standing; and sitting on porch, Loretta holding Olen, and Lola. Johnnie hasn’t been born yet. 

On the day she was buried, the weather was extremely cold. Rachel’s children were not allowed to go to the cemetery on the hillside to see their mammy buried. They said goodbye to her inside their home and then a neighbor brought his mule-drawn wagon to carry away her pine coffin.

Granny found my pieced top along with my batting and backing folded neatly, lying next to Rachel’s sewing basket. She gathered me up and took me with her when she left. She now lived with her daughter in Ohio and so, unfinished, I made my way to the home of Rachel’s sister Alta.

I remained folded neatly inside a box there in Alta’s home for many, many years. After Alta had raised her children and many years after Granny had passed away, Alta found that box and opened it. She took me out of that box and remembered her sister. Alta was determined that she would finish Rachel’s flower garden for her; and so she did. She positioned the batting and the backing that Rachel had prepared those years before under the top and she quilted me by string tying my layers together.

Sometime later, Alta gifted me to Rachel’s daughter Fanny. Fanny had been seven when her mother Rachel had died. Fanny was now an adult with two adult sons. She thanked Aunt Alta for me and took me to her home in Georgia. After she had me for a couple of years, she thought about who she could pass me on to. She thought about her boys, but she knew that they barely knew Aunt Alta and Granny had died years before they had been born. Fanny did have a niece named April. April had grown up with Aunt Alta and she had known and loved Granny until Granny’s death when April was eight. She knew that April would appreciate me.

                         Granny holding me, April. I was blessed 
                         to have her in my life for eight sweet years.

And that is how I come to belong to April. I was pieced by the grandmother she could never know and the Granny who she had known and loved. I had been backed and string tie quilted by her Great Aunt Alta who was like her grandmother. I passed from Rachel’s sister Alta to her daughter Fanny; and now to Rachel’s granddaughter April. When April touches my fabric and she gazes lovingly at Rachel’s flower garden, I see her and I know that I am seeing one flower of many in another flower garden Rachel left behind. Rachel knew few flower gardens in life, but she left beautiful flower gardens behind nonetheless!