My Mother-in-law Was Special

Story ID:	417
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	Family History
Location:	Emporia Kansas USA
Year:	1960
Person:	Mom

My Mother-in-law Was Special

My six children have wonderful memories of their father’s mother and I always envied her skills with a needle and thread. Cora Myrle Martin, better know as ‘Mom’, handed down a legacy of her needlework to each of my six children and every one of her other 22 grandchildren. When each of those twelve boys and sixteen girls married or left home to set up housekeeping on their own, Cora had her lovely hand-sewn gifts ready, even for her grandson, Jonathan, who was born the year after her death.

The most important of these gifts in size and time to make, were the handmade quilts. Along with the quilt, she gave each grandchild a woven rag rug to place by the bed and a set of embroidered pillowcases with hand-crocheted lace trim. It really boggles your mind to think of the time-consuming hours Mom had to have spent preparing this heritage for her grandchildren. Only another quilter could comprehend the special kind of love that inspired Cora to undertake this tremendous task.

Besides making quilts, comforters, curtains and pillowcases for use in her own home through the years, Cora sewed dresses, bloomers and slips for her four girls and shirts for her husband, Ren and the four boys. I always wondered where she found time to do any sewing. When I first met her in the late 1930s, she was caring for a large garden with strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb and everything else you would expect to find in a garden. Just harvesting the produce for the dinner table for a family of 10 was quite an accomplishment.

This farm family raised their own pigs, beef, sheep and a large flock of chickens that had to be butchered before it could be cooked for the table. On top of that she ran the milk through a separator and made cottage cheese then made butter from the cream from four milk cows. This family of eight kids drank a lot of milk. Electricity didn’t come to that part of Greenwood County until the early ‘40s, so meat if not eaten immediately was cured or canned. Mom also canned an enormous amount of fruit and vegetables for winter eating. She also made around 30 gallons of sauerkraut in large stoneware crocks each year.

My husband remembers his Mom quilting mostly in the long winter months. The family would spend their evenings together around the wood stove either studying or reading a good book, with Mom always handy at her sewing, to answering questions. A lot of work went into a quilt before the actual quilting began. Cutting and sewing the individual blocks was time-consuming and no piece of material went to waste. Using many different patterns, even the tiniest scrap was used. She had more time to quilt as her children married and left home.

In our family the quilt of staggered lines of rectangle blocks belonging to our oldest daughter, Susan, along with her rug and pillowcases were lost in fire in 1982, but the family had enjoyed them for 16 years.

Virginia’s gifts went traveling as her job as children’s librarian took her from El Dorado to Ohio and then to the east coast in Maryland. Years later she moved to Australia and finally to Florida taking her precious gift from Grandma with her.

The quilt my daughter, Cindy, received in 1969 the year Mom died, is different than any I have ever seen. It has four sets of six tapered pieces spread in a circle on a white background.

In 1974 Karen took her gifts to college at the School of the Ozarks near Branson, Missouri and used the quilt as an eye-catching spread for her dormitory bed. I’m not sure what it was called. It was made with 81 tiny squares to a block, making a real brilliant colored quilt.

Another pattern Mom used was a four-patch, like our youngest daughter, Shannon’s, quilt. Our only son, Owen, commented, “Since I was still unmarried when I received mine, Grandma made me a single-bed size quilt “.

Almost all the quilts were made with recycled material or material left from over from other sewing projects. The gift-giving began in 1953 when Cora’s first grandson was married and the last was in 1970. Many were stored in hump-bank trunks waiting for the special time to go to a brand new home.

Mom’s love of quilts has passed down through our family, as shown by Cindy, who has written a poem that was published in “Potpourri” last year about “Grandma’s Quilt”. Then in the early 1980s Virginia helped organize the Baltimore Heritage Quilt Guild, a group that published a monthly newsletter and held annual quilt shows in Baltimore, MD, dedicated to preserving the art of quilting.

Cora Martin’s legacy was complemented in 1993 by wooden quilt racks that hang on the wall that Owen handcrafted for each of his five sisters to display their heirloom quilts from a special Grandma for all to enjoy.