Image Fred Babb Art www.Fredbabbart.com

A corollary of this is don’t take cold medicine and try to work with hot things or sharp objects. Hence I’ve not been doing much artwork the last few days, as I seem to be coming down with a rather nasty cold. So this week seems to be a good time to talk about memorial quilts. I apologize in advance if this post is more incoherent and rambling then usual, I blame the DayQuil.

For thousands of years textiles have been used in the burial rites of numerous cultures. Memorial quilts, also known as, mourning, bereavement, passage, grief or widow’s quilts were common in the US starting in the 1800s. They were often made from the clothes of the deceased person, mourning clothes of the maker(s) or even ribbons from funerary wreaths. They were used to layout the deceased on, wrap the deceased in or to provide comfort to those left behind. Their popularity rose with the cult of mourning that developed in the Victorian era and coincided with the crazy quilt, autograph album, signature quilt crazes.[1]

Here is a good example of a Memorial Quilt in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY:

Memorial Crazy Quilt ca. 1877 Made by Tamar Horton Harris North (American, 1833–1905)

For more information on the quilt see the full link at the Met.

The tradition carries on to today, if you google any of the terms listed above you will likely find local workshops where you can make your own or find someone on Etsy willing to make one for you. We often see waves of public quiltmaking projects to mark tragic events. There is still something very cathartic in the process and tradition of the memorial quilt. The most well know memorial quilt is the Aids Memorial Quilt done to commemorate the many lives lost in the US to the AIDS epidemic (www.aidsquilt.org).

In my variation on the theme instead of using clothing from the individual I am using a book that reminds me of the person and where possible personal items like my grandmother’s recipes and buttons. My contributions to the to quilts, rather than my mourning clothes or funeral ribbons, are my hand-made prints and the thought and care that I put into choosing the patterns and colors for each quilt.

When I began this project I planned it out to include quilts for the following nine women in my family:

• Grace Turner Jordan, my great-grandmother
• Beaulah Jordan Hodgman, my maternal grandmother
• Halice Amabel Smith Robinson Bemis, by paternal grandmother
• Grace (Gracie) Jordan Bacon, my great aunt
• Elsie Jordan Bogart, my great aunt
• Mary Jordan Parks, my great aunt
• Elizabeth (Lib) Turner, my great-great aunt
• Cassie (Nan) Reeves Hodgman, my great-grandmother
• Norma Hodgman Clifford, my great aunt

I am also making an extra square for each quilt to form a sampler quilt that will serve as a dowry quilt for me. When I have a few of these joined together I’ll post some pics.

Time for some tea and honey. I may try my Old Gramp’s recipe (my great-grandfather Jordan) – equal parts tea, honey and whiskey. More next Friday.

[1] Carlson, Linda. (2003) Quilting to Soothe the Soul. Iola, WI