Threads Through Time

A Herstory of Heroes

Jun 16, 2021

When my bed is made, there are a pair of special teddy bears that sit atop an array of pillows in a place of honor. Despite their rumpled and worn appearance, they are Royalty—Queens with a long family herstory.

Herstory, noun:

history considered or presented from a feminist viewpoint or with special attention to the experience of women (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
history written from the point of view of women, and giving importance to their experiences and activities (Cambridge Dictionary)

Ninety years ago, when my mother, Louise, was just a young’un, she accompanied her mother, my Grandma Edna, on a trip back to Omaha, Nebraska, from their home in Southern California. There they would visit Edna's mother, Margaret or Maggie. It was early in The Great Depression, Mom’s father had died, and their Wyoming oil wells had shut down. From riches to rags they fell in one swift action. Grandma Edna was taking her daughter Louise back to live with her own mother Margaret temporarily—just until they could get their feet back on the ground—just until times got better.

My great-grandmother Margaret's home had a huge screened-in porch, as was common in the Midwest. It was on that porch, cooled by the summer evening breezes, that the neighbor ladies gathered round a large quilting frame, chatting and telling stories, while they worked together on the final phase of quilt construction. Encircling the frame, each woman used her own fine needle to make the tiny lines of quilting stitches that only an accomplished seamstress can create. The quilt they worked on those evenings was adorned with red and blue and green “sawtooth stars”—made from eight triangle points arranged around a square center—that “sparkled” across a natural muslin "sky."

Edna joined the ladies in their communal stitching. Though her stitches were not as practiced as theirs, she had a steady hand, sharp eyes, and the skills of an accomplished dressmaker. Being mostly a circle of mothers and grandmothers, the ladies took pleasure in introducing young Louise to the womanly art of quilting. And despite the clumsy nature of her stitches, they left Mom's threads alongside their own, for as every traditional quilter knows, each quilt is unique and must incorporate a mistake or two for good luck. The quilt was finished, the last stitches in place, before the visiting Californians were to depart. Great-grandmother Margaret made the Sawtooth Star quilt a gift to her daughter, so it traveled home with them on the train.

They returned to the little City of San Fernando in Southern California, where Grandma got a job at the elegant Porter Hotel in downtown. She cleaned all the upstairs guest rooms daily in exchange for a tiny single room at the far end of the hall. Mom and Grandma lived in that little room, with its shared bathroom located at the other end of the hall, until Mom graduated from high school in the Forties and rented a place of her own. Grandma continued to live and work at the Porter Hotel until the late Sixties, so I have vivid memories of visiting her there when I was young.

I was reminded of those quilted teddy bears and this Depression Era quilting story when I began reading the book All That She Carried by historian Tiya Miles this week. It’s the history of, nay, it’s the herstory of handmade fabric items passed down through the generations of an African American family from one woman to the next. With few possessions to call their own as either enslaved women or later as “just” women, they cherished the simple everyday fabric items that connected them to their mothers and grandmothers. Early in the book, the focus is on a traveling bag and a quilt that became prized family heirlooms.

The bag was originally made in the 1850s by an enslaved woman named Rose for her daughter Ashley just before her daughter was traumatically sold away from her. Many years later in 1921, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered Rose and Ashley’s story onto the bag itself. Today, that bag rests on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

My great grandmother Rose
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
Ruth Middleton
1921

The author Tiya Miles’ own family saved a quilt handmade by her grandmother’s sister during The Great Depression, when her African American family lost their land, nay, when White swindlers and bullies in the South took their land at gunpoint. That quilt-making great-aunt saved the family from complete ruin by hiding and saving one of their cows. She became the hero in the author’s family herstory, just as Rose and Ashley were the heroes of their family’s herstory.

The hand-stitching in the traveling bag and in the quilt became the metaphorical threads that bound the women in each family together across generations, across centuries, and inspired courage and hope for better times ahead in each new generation of women.

Sawtooth Star Pattern with Central Square and Eight Triangle Points

My Grandma Edna used her Depression Era quilt for years; I remember it lying across the end of the narrow single bed in her room at the hotel when I was little. She and I would sit together on her dark-blue-plaid, wool-homespun bedspread, propped up on the matching pillows, while she read stories aloud to me—nursery rhymes and fairy tales mostly.

For years, the quilt was used as a picnic blanket, as a cover for us girls on long car trips while we slept in the “way-back” of the station wagon, as a lap-rug at football games, and for building "forts" with the sofa cushions. Washed to the point where the bold colors had faded to mere pastel versions of themselves, the once beautiful quilt was worn threadbare around the edges and along the seams, with stuffing peeking out all over.

Twenty-five years ago, I rediscovered the tattered quilt in an old trunk in Mom's garage and decided it was too precious to discard. Turning thin paper teddy-bear-pattern pieces this way and that, after a time, I was able to find just enough usable material left in the disintegrating quilt to construct two bears. Carefully, I stitched the pieces together—body, arms and legs, head and ears. Even more carefully, I stuffed each new bear with cotton batting, sewed on button eyes and smooth noses of satin stitches, and tied matching satin ribbons round each bear’s neck. One I kept for myself. One I gave to my mother. Now with my mother gone, I have them both.

What beauties they are. I’ve taken to calling them Maggie and Edna. Reborn, resurrected, these quilted old bears connect four generations of women in my family. Maggie Bear and Edna Bear contain threads stitched by us all—my great-grandmother Margaret and grandma Edna, my mother Louise and me. Each of us left our mark and, having done so, are joined by threads across time and space. Great-grandma Margaret died before I was born, so I only know her through family pictures and herstories. Grandma Edna passed away while I was in high school, and Mom died in 2015. The bears keep each of them alive—holding the women’s stories in their stitching and joining us all together in threads of time.

Do you have precious fabric heirlooms passed down through the women in your family?

Do they carry herstories in their threads?
Do you use them or display them or are they too fragile?
Who will you pass the heirlooms and herstories on to next?

It's Dawning on Me

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