“There are no coincidences,” asserts Pamela Weeks
of Durham, New Hampshire. So it seemed as a chain of events unfolded for
Roberta Paskos over the last few weeks. Roberta, who recently moved to Petaluma from Bodega,
called me regarding an antique quilt she owns. “It’s been in my
family since the 1800’s,” she said. “It belonged to my great-great
grandmother.” That’s about all Roberta knows about the quilt, other
than that the date 1830 is stitched onto the back of it.
“My ancestors came to the United States
from Poland
in the nineteenth century to escape the Bolsheviks,” Roberta explained.
“They settled in New
Hampshire, which is where I grew up.”
Where, when, or how the quilt arrived in the family is a mystery. The
quilt was never used in Roberta’s lifetime; it was always folded and put away.
Recently, when she moved, Roberta found the quilt and decided to try to
learn something about it.
Roberta took it to the Quilted Angel, where the knowledgeable staff gave her
some clues. While there, she perused some quilting magazines and found the name
and phone number of Pamela Weeks, a quilt historian from – you’ll never guess
— New Hampshire.
She called Pam, who — lo and behold! — was visiting her father in St. Helena and was willing to come look at the quilt
and give her assessment.
Meanwhile, Roberta brought the quilt to me to hang in the Petaluma Historical Museum
for the “Joe the Quilter” event on March 15. Joe Cunningham has
some expertise in dating antique quilts, and his verdict was that the quilt dated
from the 1860’s. The embroidered date, 1830, could have been stitched on years
after the quilt was made and it could refer to just about anything — a birth
date, a wedding date, an arrival date.
Pam arrived on the scene on Monday, March 23, and came to the same
conclusion. She enlightened us regarding other aspects of the quilt. It
contains “double pinks,” fabric printed with two shades of pink,
which became widely available in the 1850’s; and “poison green,”
popular in the 1860’s. The patchwork designs indicated a utility quilt,
quite possibly an advanced beginner’s quilt, and one probably quilted on a
frame. The date 1830 definitely was added long after the quilt was stitched
because the thread is different from
that in the rest of the quilt.
As Pam revealed this and that about the
quilt, Roberta remembered facts about her family, such as that her grandfather
had worked for the Indian Head textile mill in Nashua, New Hampshire. Pam gave Roberta some genealogical homework to do to document the quilt’s
origins, and Pam will do some digging, too.
It seems likely to me that
the quilt was a gift to Roberta’s great-great grandmother, simply because
Roberta stated that no one in her family sewed quilts and because this one was
never used. What else do you do with a handmade gift that you don’t particularly like
or want? You fold it up and put it away!
