MY QUILTING MUSE, Grandma Laura Belk

Here sits my grandma with her young friend who had come to visit at Christmas.

My mother once told me how proud my grandmother would have been to know how much I enjoy quilting. I hope somehow she is indeed aware of my interest and might even be my ’muse’ when it comes to creating new projects and picking out colors. I certainly thank her out loud from time to time and ask for her help.
This Butterfly Quilt was a wedding gift to Flutemaker and me back in 1960. Grandma cut out the design from a picture she had drawn on a piece of cardboard. She decided how she wanted it to lay on the square of white fabric (on point)and how to place the colors for the best look.
The style of curved pieces are similar to the wedding ring design. After sewing all the butterflies together she appliqued them to the white squares and sandwiched top and bottom with batting and quilted it closely. I love it still. What a gift of love, time and effort.



Laura Ethel Masters Belk was a simple country woman born into a time and place of pioneer life and culture. She was born in Overton Co. Tennessee around 1878 or so. Grandma was shy and didn’t marry until she was in her thirties. My Dad fondly remembered her combing her long auburn hair and twisting it around her head like a crown. She never had electricity or indoor plumbing until Grandpa died and she came to Michigan to live half the time with us and the other part of the year with her other son and family.
She was a quilter back when it was a necessity, a way to use material one more time and insure warm cozy bed covers. The fabrics were from shirt tails, dress remnants, flour sacks and home spun clothes. Sometimes old covers were refreshed with new tops. Many of her designs were known favorites shared with family and friends. Sometimes she created her own patterns. The quilt above was much more colorful when she made it, but it has faded until the only colors left are the colorfast blue and green. The other fabrics were inexpensive plaids that just didn't have what it takes to live forever.

I am a legacy quilter. Perhaps I would have been drawn to quilting anyway, but with a grandmother and a mother both enjoying the creative process with fabric and needlework I think I was destined to love the feel of fabric, to admire the placement of color and design and thrill to the realization of it all coming together as Art, Craft and Heritage.
My grandmother, mother and their friends gathered around a quilt frame hung from the ceiling in our basement. The Grandmother's Flower Garden above is one such quilt. I have been known to sit nearby reading a book and listening to the chit chat. My little brother would build forts under the quilt and deploy miniature soldiers in various situations. On rare occasions I would also sit at the frame to add a few stitches. It would not surprise me to learn Mother or Grandma would replace my toe catchers with smaller neater stitches when I wasn’t there.

Here is a wonderful old pattern called Dresden Plate. All of her quilts are just barely covering my queen size bed. It is obvious to me beds way back then were much smaller and more cuddle size. There was only a fireplace and wood cook stove in the cabins of Grandma's time. The beds were in the living room/workroom/parlor where the fireplace gave light and warmth.

Here is a close-up of the Dresden Plate. I hope you can see the W in the corner. Grandma made this quilt in the cabin before Grandpa died around 1950. The W is for Willie, my Dad. She also had quilts with P on them that she made for Uncle Palo.

This last quilt is one I put together for my Dad who told me the homespun plaids that I had in the Nine patch blocks reminded him of the shirts that his mother had made for him when he was still at home. I was thrilled to be working with fabrics that helped my grandmother care for her family. Grandma died in 1971 at 93 years old. I hope there is a quilting bee and a frame for the dear ladies to gather around and create to their hearts content.