Patchwork of Possibilities

Like the wild flowers that bloom across the prairie, the women in our lives bring beauty, healing and sustenance to all that they touch.

My grandparents lived in a home (shack) out on the prairies of North Dakota. My grandmother bore 8 children, 2 of whom died at birth and were buried in the corner of the fence line in shoeboxes. The family got their water from a slough because they had no well. She worked her garden by hand and hauled every drop of water. Her gardens were bountiful and she enjoyed sharing the fruits of her labor. Her garden always had flowers. My quilt is in honor of my grandmother, Gertie McQuay, and all the strong women who had the courage to endure the hardships of homesteading.

The quilt is a form of a patchwork, depicting a garden or fields. The woman is appliquéd on the quilt and there is a scattering of appliquéd flowers to show that no matter how hard life was, they could find some beauty in their world.

My great aunt Dora went without a husband and a career to raise my dad and his brother. Embroidery, wallpapering and gardening are among the things she taught me. Historic floral designs are adapted for beads and sequins in this quilt. It represents a garden of diverse pieces, each adding to the whole.

How Many Pairs of Shoes are in Your Closet:

Which Ones Will you Put On Today?

They May Not Always Be Comfortable,

But You Wear Them Anyway.

This quilt represents all the tasks and duties we take on as women in today’s world. We are all called upon to handle jobs of many descriptions throughout our daily lives. We need to step back and appreciate all the great things we are capable of doing and realize we are always “on the job.”

Women have traditionally demonstrated great strength and created great beauty at the same time in the same person. The quilt I will submit will be a crazy quilt done completely in variation of white satin and moiré fabrics, embroidered in traditional crazy quilt stitches, embellished with lace and sequins and found objects, and containing images and symbols of traditional and non traditional women. I hope the irony is obvious; delicate materials symbolizing women with backbones of steel.

I have a crazy quilt that was sewn by my grandmother and embellished by my mother, both strong women, single parents who raised children through extreme hardship. Both created lovely items throughout their lifetimes. This quilt is in honor of both of them.

My Aunt taught me the names of plants and flowers. She also taught me how to love.

Former Lieutenant Governor Rosemarie Myrdal served as the inspiration for this quilt. The blocks represent family, the farm, the church and her service in the legislature and as lieutenant governor of North Dakota.

The rows of paper dolls represent the changing roles and opportunities for women. The conformity of the top row is in contrast to the diversity of the more contemporary row three. Unity is a theme at every level, women joining hands.

When considering the women who have impacted our lives, our mothers immediately came to mind. We decided the focus of our quilt would be quotes of maternal wisdom that have transcended the passage of time. We searched the internet for words of advice from influential women, and we also interviewed family and friends of all ages, asking them what they remembered hearing from their mothers. A common thread ran throughout the comments, all the way from “No” to “You’re the best.” With a limit of 1,728 square inches on the front of the quilt, we only were able to feature our favorites, but we saved the best quote for the back of the quilt!

This quilt is to honor my great Grandma and my Grandmother. Grandma was born in a sod shanty on land my great grandparents homesteaded northwest of Drayton, ND. My Grandma was 2 when they moved into the first wood frame house. They were tough ladies that lived and raised their families off the land. They also raised cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and large gardens. Grandma lived to be 96. These are the women that I draw my strength from.

This still life scene has a background that is pieced and woven, representing the many different influences that join to form our foundation. The flowers represent nature’s beauty and the women who taught us to appreciate it. The faded photograph represents history and our journey as women. The shoes represent our individuality and femininity.

My quilt “Prance to the Front” is dedicated to all quilters who have the courage to proudly display their creations.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a dynamic woman who fought for the equality of every human. Her undying dedication to her beliefs gave inspiration to those who knew that Eleanor wanted every person to have the same chances in life. She felt that women deserved as much of a chance in this society as anyone. Her sincerity to fight for these causes still has an impact on equal rights today.

She spent the first seven years of her life traveling in a 6 x 26 trailer her father made. With her family of six they passed through North and South Dakota and Minnesota seeking work. She and her younger sister shared an army cot. Her mother ill with TB was in and out of sanatoriums in the different areas during this time. In 1941 her father found steady work and they rented her first house. The girls slept under a blanket meant for a horse because it was so cold upstairs. She would walk to school each winter morning in a pair of black boys four buckle over boots. The kids would tease her because she wore boy’s boots. When she was 9 years old, that year for Christmas she was given a pair of lovely brown girls over boots. They had a beautiful button and clasp on them. She was so thrilled she wore them to bed that night.

The four middle panels of the quilt are pictorial. Panel 1 features a white buffalo and an American Indian woman in a white buckskin dress against a landscape background. This grounds the quilt firmly in mythical times by referring to the origin story of Lakota, the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman who brought the sacred pipe of the Lakota. Panel 2 features the everyday life and work of the traditional American Indian woman on the Plains. There will be a tipi as a marker for the traditional time frame, a women and child as well as the outline of a buffalo hide, plants that would have been collected, etc. Panels 3 and 4 will represent the work of modern American Indian women: mother, doctor, teacher, business woman, etc. There are representations of the women. The background is a cityscape for Panel number 3 and a rural landscape for Panel number 4. The quilt is meant to portray the many shoes that American Indian women have worn through the centuries.

Abstract waves surround a wavy soled sandal in this design. The waves represent the challenges faced in life and the empowerment of overcoming challenges. They also represent the highlights in our lives. The wavy soled platform sandal is a favorite shoe in my memory and associated with early years when I was on my own for the first time.

Virginia Woolf is the inspiration for this quilt. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she said: “All a woman needs is a little money and a room of one’s own.” Her essay has empowered women throughout the centuries. In my room, I would have a little art, some books, music, some sewing.

The Attic Windows quilt block was chosen for its representation of windows and how we view the world. The windows in this design are filled with images that symbolize roles and influences which have shaped me as a woman.

The Mariner’s Compass has long been associated with finding your way. In this quilt it represents the ray of hope my Aunt Maude provided. She believed you could do anything you set your mind to.

I designed this quilt with my Mother as my inspiration. She enjoyed flowers, whether she grew them in her many flower beds or observed them at the International Peace Garden, national parks, or in her sisters’ yards. The flowers could be perennials or annuals and any color of the rainbow. She took pleasure in all phases of flowers: from choosing which flowers to grow, to planting (seed or the actual plant), to watering and weeding, and to cutting and arranging bouquets. She always snapped pictures of flowers so she would remember them in years to come. This quilt reminds me of one of those pictures.

My mother inspired me to design this quilt. The 9-patch block was used because her first quilted project was made using this block. The coffee cups represent the many cups of coffee drunk by family and friends that were so important to her. The autumn leaves and flowers depict my mother’s love of fall and the many drives to observe the foliage and flowers.

My Scottish grandmother, Marguerite Blake, was my greatest influence in life. This is symbolized in this design by the tree of life (our family lived on the same farm), heart (she was the heart of our family), stars of night (I stayed with her when Grampa was gone overnight), log cabin blocks (our family lake cabin), Scottish plaid, and her flower garden. Everything she did, she did to the best of her ability and with love for her family. I became who I am as a woman while walking with her in her shoes.

My quilt honors four special aunts for their contributions to education, (one room country school teachers) and their efforts to promote our Norwegian culture. Each of the four women depicted on this quilt were mentors for me in sharing their talents, beliefs, and community service. Two aunts taught in a one room country school and the other aunts grew up in Norway and shared their cooking talents and artistic interests. Specialized fabrics and objects are stitched onto the quilt. A scanned photo of each woman honored is in the center of the square. There are objects added to that area that will indicate her special talents and interests. The fabric strips around the center box further illustrate those abilities.

Those young women who came to the prairies to teach in the one-room schools were pioneers as daring as the men who broke the sod. We are in their debt.

My grandmother, Anna Koushkouski, was a young girl when her family immigrated to North Dakota with her family (Germans from Russia) in the late 1800’s. After marrying in the early 1900’s, my grandparents began their new life together in a sod house on the North Dakota prairie northwest of Jamestown, North Dakota. She and my grandfather gave their children and grandchildren a model of family life, grounded in their faith and hard work. It was my grandmother who instilled in me a love of quilting. Her quilts were simple utility quilts to be used for warmth on cold winter evenings. But even in their simplicity there was beauty in her choices of fabric and the stitches with which she used to embellish them. Flowers were also important to her. She usually had several flower gardens in addition to a vegetable garden, bringing beauty into a hard North Dakota farm life.

This quilt is dedicated to my daughter Lisa who was born with brain damage that left her unable to use her arms or legs, or to speak. Over the last 30 years, Lisa has been an inspiration to almost everyone she has come into contact with. For some it was just having a more positive outlook, some became more accepting of people’s differences, and some have gone on to profoundly affect the lives of others. The most exciting of these inspirations happed five years ago when Ardyce Burley, who works with Lisa at the Polk County DAC, had a discussion with her son, Eric, a software engineer, about her frustrations with Lisa’s inability to communicate. Eric has developed a software package that Lisa uses everyday to ‘talk’ to us; more, importantly, LisaCOMM is also being used by other disabled people around the country to help open up their worlds, too.

This quilt design came to mind because of the many women who have come before me and also those that are currently influencing my life. These women have shared parts of themselves with me through all of the joys and pain that I have experienced in my life journey. What they have shared with me has enabled me to return a part of myself to them when needed. As our journey continues, our hearts become a patchwork of all those who have had an effect on our lives.

Many a little girl dreams of becoming a ballet dancer and owning her first pair of toe shoes. All of our achievements begin with a dream. Dreams can only become a reality as long as we hold on to them. I hope you never stop dreaming.

Nine members of our Advisory Committee created individual squares to make this quilt. The shoes connect their life stories, interests and histories to work, family and fun.

This quilt has been designed to represent the patchwork of possibilities created by this project for the Women’s Fund. It is a traditional patchwork quilt. The colors and patterns of the material reflect the great variety of women, their strengths, their abilities, their values, their histories. The patches blend together to form a vibrant tapestry which symbolizes the rich contribution of women to the quality of life in our region.

Patchwork of Possibilities 2006-2007