Alice's Communication Quilt--The Lost Art of Letter Writing

The art of letter writing has, sadly,  almost disappeared.  I have a notebook filled with letters written by my parents to my dad’s younger sister Sallie in the 1930s, along with a few to his mother.  My parents were engaged, but it was during the Depression and times were hard.  Reading them, I heard my dad lamenting over the difficulty of finding a job as a journalist and worrying if they’d ever get to marry.  But then I heard my mother exulting as a new bride, listing many of the delights of marriage.  I decided to focus on this treasure-trove of letters for this quilt.

After choosing a few of the letters, I scanned them and some envelopes, resized them, and printed them on Jacquard Inkjet Fabric Sheets.   I also scanned and printed a picture of my parents taken in the early days of their marriage.

For the background of the letters and envelopes and the picture, I made a crazy quilt block.   I used some of Mother’s old, sheer handkerchiefs, as well as some old lace.  I backed these delicate fabrics with pink and blue fabric (more about these in the photo captions), fusing them together with Misty Fuse.  Once the crazy quilt pieces were fused, I sewed them together and added some decorative machine embroidery stitches to the seam lines and a bit of lace insertion with pink ribbon.

Next I arranged the photo and snippets from the letters and envelopes onto the background.  Once I had a design that pleased me and showed off the lovely embroidery on the hankies, I fused them to the background with more Misty Fuse.  Finally, I stitched around all of the fused pieces with a tiny zig-zag stitch.

I bound the quilt with one of the fabrics used behind the hankies, and I made a Cross Country block for the back, again using some of the fabrics from the front, as well as some 1930 vintage feed sack fabrics.  I chose Cross Country to symbolize how my father made so many cross-country (well, cross-state!) trips to visit Mother, during their long courtship!

The center block in the backing was also used under some of the crazy quilt pieces.  It reminds
me of my mother's "every day" china, Pink Tower by Spode.  I have a few pieces of this china, and I think of Mother every time I see them!  My father loved flowers and gardening, 
and he loved Texas, so the blue bonnets and other wild flowers in the fabric are in honor of him.  The other two fabrics in the backing are from authentic 1930s feed sacks.  Again, I chose pink for Mother and blue for Daddy.  It is likely that they would recognize these fabrics, perhaps in some garments that were made for them by their grandmothers!

I couldn't resist a close-up!  Perhaps you can read, in Daddy's distinctive back hand cursive, that he tells his sister Sallie "don't tell Mom" about losing a job he had for a short time.  And Delight #3 that Mother mentions to her sister- in-law is trying new recipes!  She projects into the future and imagines being a granny with grandchildren spending hours in her kitchen.  This is poignant to me because my late, beloved daughter was her first granddaughter, and she did, indeed, love to cook with her grandmother!