Quilting and Family History: Report from Road, Honoring Eleanor Burns

The Family Curator meets with Eleanor Burns at

Road to California Quilt Show in Ontario, California

The Road to California Quilt Show is wonderful again this year. My first order of business was to visit one of my favorite booths, Beyond the Reef Patterns, and find the fabric to finish a baby quilt for nephew Ryan and his wife, Jordana. Baby Rojo (as they call her) is due soon, so I have to get busy. Natalie loved the quilt top made with their island-style fabrics and has already posted a picture of me with the quilt top on the shop blog.

Then it was on to the floor of the convention center to view the quilt exhibits, talk to friends, and shop with the hundreds of vendors.

Among my favorites are the historical and reproduction fabric and pattern lines. I am continually amazed at the beautiful reproduction fabrics designed by Judie Rothermel at Schoolhouse Quilts and by Froncie Quinn at Hoopla. Both design fabric lines from textiles at New England museums so that today's quilters can use authentic period colors and designs in new interpretations of antique quilts.

One of my last stops at the end of a very long day was at Eleanor Burns' Quilt in a Day booth. Most quilters have heard of Eleanor, even if they didn't learn to quilt by her methods. I learned how to quilt from her! With a book on the table, I was able to design, cut, sew, and actually finish my first quilt. In fact, the pattern I am using for Baby Rojo is the same one I used for that first quilt and is still one of my favorites.

Eleanor revolutionized the world of quilting with her first book in 1978, Make a Quilt in a Day Log Cabin. Her theme seems to be "you can do it." She helped people find success in quilting by rewriting patterns in plain language and streamlining construction techniques for modern equipment. And, everything was always done with a smile and a laugh.

She has written quilt patterns and books featuring designs from the Civil War through the mid-20th century. Each book includes notes about the culture of the times and serve as a helpful memory-jogger for working with the period.

Her latest book, Victory Quilts, is a treasure-trove for history-buffs and filled with stories about World War II and the 1940's. Anyone interested in making a special family memory quilt would enjoy the sampler patterns and Eleanor's conversational writing.

Eleanor has been honored by many quilt guilds and associations for her contributions to the craft, and I think quilting family historians would also acknowledge her efforts to make history personal and more meaningful. I don't know if she compiles pedigrees or researches her family history, but for her contributions to family history and culture, I name Eleanor Burns to be an Honorary Family Historian.

Is there someone in your sphere of interest whose work enriches that of genealogists and family history researchers? Perhaps they deserve to be an Honorary Family Historian too. If you write about them on your blog, post a comment here and I will round up the list for easy viewing.

The Magic Cupboard

Lately I am feeling a lot like Peter and Susan in C.S. Lewis's classic, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It seems that every time I go to my living room photo cabinet, I find a new treasure. Just before leaving on our trip to New England I discovered another stash of photo negatives from my grandmother's trunk. I must have tucked them away out of the light when I first unpacked the boxes and then forgotten about them.

Last night I discovered more negatives and another treasure. Nearly 20 years ago we took a trip to Montana for a Boy Scout campout on a local member's private riverside ranch. It was a fabulous week and after the camp we headed west through Missoula towards Spokane and Coeur d'Alene where we have relatives. The countryside was beautiful, green, hot.

Just outside Couer d'Alene we spotted a country fair and pulled over. The boys weren't too thrilled, but we trooped around for a few hours and spotted a booth where two beautiful quilts were on display among the crafts and homemade goodies. One was a double-bed size in the Delectable Mountain pattern, the other was hand-embroidered flower blocks assembled into a twin size quilt. Both were pink and white, not exactly colors much used in my house with two boys. The women had only the two quilts for sale, and the price was pretty stiff for our budget, although now it would be a ridiculous bargain. I was surprised that the two women running the booth were actually selling the beautiful quilts. Evidently it was a mother-daughter team and the older woman shrugged off my surprise, "They were 'extras'," she said.

My own few sorry attempts at quilting had taught me that it was truly a labor of love and skill. Both quilts were completely hand-quilted and had that lovely soft hand that comes from cotton throughout. As my ever-indulgent husband pulled out his wallet, I asked the maker if she would make a label with her name and the date for the quilts, and although she modestly refused at first, eventually she agreed to take my address and send me the labels.

Now, I know those labels arrived in good time, I remember seeing them sometime, but I have not been able to find them since. I started quilting in 2000 and have often looked at those two spreads with a greater appreciation of the work and skill that went into them. What a surprise to find that envelope with the labels tucked inside a packet of photos from about the same time.

The quiltmaker carefully embroidered her name and the year she made the quilts on each tag. One bears the inscription "Louis Nixon, 1943-1954." This is the Delectable Mountain Quilt, as I recall that she said she had made it some years previously. I have never heard of the pattern referred to by this name and am unsure of the meaning of the words. A quick search on Google has turned up a few entries in Find a Grave and links to a actor in Band of Brothers for "Louis Nixon." My best guess is that the quilt might have been made for a person by this name, or the block setting was known locally by the name. Meanwhile, I have a bit of careful cleaning to attend to on the larger quilt and then a bit of hand sewing to finally place those labels where they belong.

Sources:

Boicourt, Alice L. Quilt dated 1943-1954. Privately held by Denise Levenick [address for private use,] Pasadena, California, 2008, purchased from the quiltmaker in 1979.

Boicourt, Alice L. Quilt dated October 1979. Privately held by Denise Levenick [address for private use,] Pasadena, California, 2008, purchased from the quiltmaker in 1979.

"Louis Nixon." Blockbase: The CD Version of Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. CD-ROM. Bowling Green, Ohio: The Electric Quilt Company, 2000.